You went balls deep in something, and you failed.

But through it you learned what kind of person you were, what kind of job you wanted and what problems you had with your view on work. There is no better teacher than failure, but in order to truly fail, you need to truly try.

I would never be able to work in a startup; I am way too afraid of uncertainty. Mad props to you for going through it.

But my point, is that you were not afraid of effort. You committed 100% and it blew it in your face; shit happens. But you learned a very valuable lesson that you could never have learned going the easy way.

And I guess that's my point. I don't care about wasting 10 years being a doctor and then going back to physics which I love. At least I will have went 100% into something and came out with valuable lessons about what I really enjoy doing in life. Unlike OP, who's going for short term fun.

I'm rambling here, but my conclusion seems to be this; long term goals over short term fun. You need to truly work and challenge yourself in order to 1)find what you actually want in life and 2)be able to actually make these goals come true. And if that means busting my ass for 4 years on something that "fails", but learning about what I truly want, then I believe it is a fair price.

Here's a humble brag; I was 17 when I did my interview for med school (and not some bullshit 8 year school, a real 4-year MD), but got rejected based on my poor interviewing skills. Yet this failure made me realize so many things about myself that I would trade that ego loss ( and time lost) a hundred times before losing the lessons I learned about life.