ask for forgiveness
That is the hardest part. How can I forgive myself for having spent so much of my life in the wrong direction? I feel like I've let down all the people who believed the same way I did because I failed to make it work.
confide in people who care for you
The reason I'm committing the sepaku of asking Reddit, with its mix of wise men and trolls, is that the people who care for me want to believe I was right all along. I know I need to present to them a confident new me because seeing me upset upsets them.
As you said, your life did a pretty damn good job of conditioning you to think a certain way, and you embraced it fully. At every single one of these points in your life, you could've just said "Fuck it". But you didn't.
That is what I have trouble forgiving myself for. That I embraced it fully instead of saying "fuck it", and that has cost me decades of my life I could have directed elsewhere.
Yes, they're in the minority, but I don't think that people like Stan Lee, or Shigeru Miyamoto or John Lasseter had the same difficulties as you did
Everyone predicted I would be in their league (but in my field, not in their fields), and I came close, but I missed, and it has been a very long fall. Now I have to admit to these people I didn't live up to my promise -- and yes, it feels like I promised them I would do as well as they predicted and expected of me.
Just stop being an old fart that is too prideful (or scared) to change and adapt to what's new around you.
I'm not scared. I feel helpless. I don't feel like I trust my senses any more.
I know I will get past this someday. But every year is another year closer to the grave. I don't want to know in my 60s what I should have done in my late 40s; I want to know in my 40s.
I don't expect any of you to solve my life problems. Just to point to a star, maybe, and say "Walk towards that until you know what is what" or to a book and say "Read this and you will learn how to trust yourself again despite the guilt of finding out how wrong you could be."