I've got nothing useful to add really except to vaguely echo what some others have said. But I'll give it a go anyways:
I've been through some sh1t times but right at the moment I'm feeling pretty good about where my life is heading (with the possible exception of the "retirement time" like Philly says!).
I'm looking back at the sh1t times now, and I realise that, for me, I kind of slipped into "victim" mode. I didn't seem to have any control over what happened to me - what other people did seemed to have far more of a controlling factor over me and my well-being. Things like a wife deciding I probably ought to be an ex-husband/father, employers deciding (albeit unwillingly) that I was surplus to requirements, the housing market deciding I was in negative equity, and every other f@cker cr@pping in my lunch-box...
I kind of went for "keep my head down, it'll turn out all right, just keep going...". That was OK, but I kept doing it for far too long, because it was easier just to get on with getting up, going to work, etc - and that's how I got into victim-mode. I personally hate change, so the minute I got any little bit of stability, no matter how naff the deal was, I'd go "ok, I don't need the rest, I'll stick here for a bit and see what happens".
I don't know when it happened, and I suspect my second wife has been hugely instrumental in this, but somehow a switch got flicked in my head. I'm not a lot different, I still get highly stressed by the unknown and having to wait on other people's decisions and actions, but nowadays I have a "f@ck this, life is actually there for the taking - I'm a talented and clever b@stard, I haven't used half of what I've got, but if I do want something I can actually go for it and there's a good chance I might get at least some of it..."
I possibly have an advantage - the years of "victim" have ingrained a "be happy with what you've got..." in me. If that attitude was all I had, I'd probably still be f@cked. But now I've also got a "...now let's see what else I can get without hurting anyone else".
The "be happy with what you've got..." gives me a kind of stability that lots of people don't seem to have. It helped me lift the "meh", and freed me to go "hey, what else can I blag now?".
It must be different for all of us. But for me it's been 1) consolidate and get content again, 2) now build on it.
Like others have said, it's real difficult figuring out what you want to do when everything else seems to be hemming you in. I think I've said this on here before, but one day I figured out that "the only thing wrong with me now is that I don't realise I'm ok". It sounded crass when I first heard it, but when I started believing I might actually be ok, by my standards not anyone else's (and by that I mean friends, colleagues AND the media tripe we're all fed), then I found I could start to function a bit better and good stuff started happening to me again.
I hope some of that might have been vaguely useful.
The main thing from me, though, is just this:
Very best wishes :D - you can sort it out. For you, it might be a change in direction, or it might not be. As far as I can make out, the main thing is to be making progress (any kind of progress at all). But, perhaps more importantly, we need to recognise the progress we're making, no matter how small, and feel damn good about ourselves because of it.
