Hi, thank you for all your responses. I've always known/ thought in theory that the Internet is or should be great at enabling friendships and goodwill (beyond just clicking on "Add to Friends" on Facebook, which is what I assume people do on it... yes, I'm off that grid), but it is still really heartening to actually see it happening.

I think I am going to quit, because it is succeeding in making me feel lousy about myself, despite my attempts to rationalize it.

I am angry with myself though for not having got my act together enough to get a new job before I do that. I can't quite say why this is so, or maybe I just can't admit it to myself. The only answer I can come up with is it's a combination of a lack of discipline, and a slight difficulty (and extreme vagueness) in what I'd like to do.

I'm a bit reluctant to apply for another programming job at the moment; I don't know how much of it is coloured by the current one. (I think by most objective standards, my job right now is pretty boring, if not positively mind-numbing - debugging poorly-written financial software that's 2-3 decades old on Windows - in terms of the programming, although the "business" aspects of it, the uses of that software and the calculations, are interesting to think about.)

But beyond wanting to "really understand how businesses work" - why/ how certain companies do well, why/ how people work together, what motivates them, why some people get paid so much more (for doing what appears to be sod all) than others, what it means to "compete", what a "competitive advantage" is, much less a "durable" one, how one can possibly see into the future - I don't know what specifically I can or want to do that would be financially useful enough (yet?) to someone else that they would be willing to pay me for it.

I've been trying to read up on what people's perspectives are on how or what makes businesses work (and spluttering and gagging over the tonnes of vacuous crap that gets spouted) - books, blogs, newspapers, annual reports - but it's been unstructured, and I have nothing tangible to show for it. I feel like I've some glimpses, but no insight that I can write or speak coherently about.

And I've wasted too much time wallowing and feeling sorry for myself (as you can imagine).

... I'll need to think about it some more - what I want to do, how, why. But it has helped just being able to "talk"/ write about it (it is easier to do it anonymously), and to see/ hear all your advices. So I'd just like to say, once again, a big "thank you".