pling87

Fellow introvert here. I don't have as many years in industry under my belt as you, but I have been through several job transitions and am enjoying the job I'm at right now.

Every single one of my jobs came not from networking, but just cold applying to positions. If networking feels inauthentic to you, I would say just to forget about it and work at getting good at your craft. If you can demonstrate you have the skills and a company has a need for that skillset, they will hire and networking skills will be irrelevant.

Also, if you're not having much success at applying for a type of position, it may be that the timing is just not right, e.g. a company has a superabundance of web developers, but what they are really in need of is embedded software developers. In a lot of cases, it's not about you, but about what the company's needs are.

At one point in time, I applied to a company and failed to get in, but later on, I tried again, got the position, and it was a great opportunity. Was I that much better? Not really, just a timing thing.

So don't give up and keep moving forward with practicing your skills and applying. The more you prepare and try, the better the odds of success.

I've enjoyed using Clozemaster - it's an app that uses the sentence-mining concept advocated by Glossika. That is, it uses pre-made cloze deletions that help you learn words in the context of a sentence. It has some advanced material and has been a good language learning tool somewhere "in-between" Duolingo and Anki.

Thanks for the clarification. Not to throw shade on the original CubeWorld developers - the work they did and the level of polish they were able to achieve was quite incredible for such a small team.

Context: For those of you who still remember it, CubeWorld was a Minecraft-like RPG game that had a wildly popular Alpha, was eventually abandoned by its developer, was later revived, and was then universally vilified by the masses because the developers "ruined" the game.

Veloren is the spiritual successor to CubeWorld, made by disappointed fans wanting something better.

Diigo has been my go-to ever since delicio.us folded. You can add any number of tags to each link, and the tags are easily searchable. The interface is not cluttered by enormous graphics, so you can view a large number of items on each page. The browser plugin and mobile app are also rock solid.

Whenever I want to save a article for reading, I add the tag "readqueue", and next time I want to read something interesting, I just search for that tag. When I finish the article, I change the tag to "readDONEqueue". I also have a "watchqueue" for videos.

I use it so much that I even signed up for the paid plan - it's been incredibly useful and has saved me from bookmark hell these past five years.

I too went through a similar phase in life during college where I felt worthless, completely socially inept, and suicidal.

The major thing you need to realize is that your self-worth is not tied to what you do. Even some of the most successful people in the world feel like a failure at times - this is because they are basing their worth on what they do, not on who they are. And that is a trap. As a famous book says, you are "fearfully and wonderfully made", and this is something you need to internalize - that you are a unique human being with experiences that no one else will ever have. You have two loving parents who recognize this fact. I can hear you at this point raising an objection, "But that's just becaus-". Stop that. Tune out of the negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk.

At this stage of life, a lot of things are happening that are adding to your stress. Don't give up. You'll find that this seemingly hopeless situation is a case of "this too, shall pass".

Now for something practical. You say that you feel that dumb. I did too, and sometimes still do. Why not put some of those feelings of inadequacy to work? If you're of lesser intelligence, it means you will need to work much harder to reach a average level of performance. With this mindset, I soon surpassed my classmates in college, despite being a very slow learner and a person of below-average intelligence.

I'm now working at a famous company as a robotics software engineer, and loving every moment of it. Hard work pays off, even if you're of lower than average intelligence. Take small steps towards your goals. As one author put it, "Little by little, one travels far."