@DracoNihil - I kind of get most of what you're saying. I used to have extended periods where I sit in my room and watch anime or mess around with old hardware. And by extended I mean weeks. When I'd slump into this depression I would call a friend and if none is available I'd just drive over to their place and hang out for 5-10 minutes. I find that human contact helps. It was best when I could go out and see people, have a drink and hold a conversation. Too much time spent around people makes me anxious, and I feel the need to retreat to my man-cave for another extended period of time, then the cycle repeats itself. I've tried anxiety medicine, but it' s not really warranted in my case. I find that I can control the anxiety (to an extent) by sheer will - if that doesn't work I take a deep breath, gather myself and focus on the task on hand - that works for me 100% of the time. Anxiety medicine makes me extremely apathetic - to a degree that I become a real asshole, so I avoid it entirely.
I lived with my sister for two years, then I my gf moved in, so we lived like that for another 4 years. In the meantime my sister's bf moved in as well - this in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment. None of us could afford to move out and get another place because wages here are a joke. Still, I plowed trough medschool while making some cash on the side wither fixing computers at home or cars at my (rented shitty) garage,and with financial help from my parents. It took great effort at first to get up in the morning and sit in a room filled with people, 99% of witch 4-6 years younger then me - but I made friends, we had fun, and when this got too overwhelming I'd take a weekend + a couple of days off. I couldn't afford to take days off too often, but when I did I made them count.
Sitting at home alone most of the time did not help. My sister was gone most of the day, and my GF was gone most of the time because of school and a part-time job. I felt pretty lonely most of the time. Life f**ing sucks when you can't find a clear purpose. For me it's been my (expensive) hobbies witch need lots of money to be fed. For the last couple of years I've had to stop working on my E30 (the old black BMW) because I couldn't afford to anymore so right now it's siting in a parking space under my apartment. It's been sitting for about 1.5 years... 🙁 It was my dad's car, and I have very fond childhood memories of it. The silver one I bought with my folks help. It was dirt cheap when I got it. It had some issues witch I fixed myself, and it's been my daily driver for the last 3.5 years. The bike I got this year. Haven't had a chance to ride it much yet since I got it off-season and I don't really have any gear. I got it so I can endure trough some of the infuriating traffic in my city - it also gets much better gas mileage then my daily driver, so I'm hoping it will pay for itself in a couple of years.
I feel a lot better about myself now - I was very depressed after finishing collage, not being able to find a stable, decent paying job - but after 6 years of plowing trough medschool, part time jobs, lots of studying and work, I was able to buy a nice apartment on credit (mortgage in the US?) witch i will be paying for the next 22 years - but hey - I get to live alone (with my gf), I have a great job (still have shitty pay - a medical resident earns under 400 euro / month here) and most importantly I feel good about myself.
My hobbies have always been weird - cars are not that big here in Romania (because of low-ish wages and high cost of the hobby) - none of my friends are into cars, and the people I know that are into cars are a bit on the douche side... Computers and retro stuff - same - I only know 2-3 people and I met them on forums. I'm not a very social person. I don't like to drink, I don't dance, I don't like crowds and loud music, so there's very little stuff I could do - but I have a good friend who comes over occasionally and we play stuff like World of Tanks - I sometimes play WoW with my sister - but it's not as much fun since she and here BF are really into the game and are way further ahead then me. I go out to quiet bars or invite friends over to my place. We talk about politics, history, philosophy and stuff like that - since we don't really share hobbies.
I've also dabbled into mods - I made a few units for Red Alert 1, and wanted to make an addon for the game based on the same engine - but due to built-in limitations (fixed unit number) I abandoned the project, moving on to openRA.
You can find the mod here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/command-conquer-tiberian-origins
Here are some gameplay videos of you're interested (pretty early version of the mod featured in these)
NOD gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCNUpYNbIqA
GDI gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PhpZmmnadY
It's a mod that allows you to play as GDI, NOD, the Allies and the Soviets, as well as a 5th faction - SpecOps9 - the precursor to GDI. I really wanted a huge campaign bridging the events of Red Alert (1) and the events of Tiberian Dawn - how Kane came to power after assasinating the URSS leader, how the Brotherhood was created in the aftermath of the fall of the URSS and how the GDI came to be. as well as how Tiberium came to earth - but so far the openRA devs have been focusing exclusively on multi-player components and supporting more games with their engine, so critical stuff like saving and loading a game is still not possible. Here's some shots from my mod:
Allied railgun tank - uses the body of the soviet heavy tank and the turret of the GDI medium tank from CnC, plus a modified gun barrel I added in sprite for sprite in .shp editor.
Spec ops 9 ion cannon uplink / tech center:
Allied railgun turret (why should only the soviets have tier 2 defences?) - made entirely in 3dsmax, using a premade scene with camera rotaion and lighting set up so that the render output is 32 sprites that would look like something out of CnC, then reworked in .shp editor.
New soviet units - katyusha MLRS and the ISU-152
GDI tanks attacking a soviet base: 
I've stopped working on the mod a couple of years ago, but I'll get back to it if I find an easy to use 2d rts engine with little to no programming skills required (I'm pretty lazy when it comes to writing code, and frankly not very good at it) or if the openRA devs implement the features i need.
