A Losers Guide to Photography: Life is Purpose

This post is a bit off topic. I've been having a bout of depression that's self-induced. I've been pontificating what's the purpose of life once you have accomplished everything you desired? I've been having this thought for a few months now and I have tried to create obstacles to keep the depression held at bay. I was scrolling Facebook when I saw a post regarding a South Korean actress Yoo Joo Eun. I don't follow anything Korean, but I found this particularly interesting. She was a young girl, about my age. She was in a similar position where she was doing what she wanted to do, act, but wasn't really successful at it. Her suicide letter was interesting because it wasn't from a position of self-loathing, hatred, remorse or anything. It was almost like her brain said, "this is enough". Her sense of purpose in life was left unfulfilled - or maybe it was fulfilled in some masochistic way. There was another lady I watched on YouTube talking about ending her life the way she wanted to. Her reasoning summed up as, "I am no longer considered beautiful. I derived my sense of purpose from my beauty and that no longer exists". And so she yacked herself. 

The more I think about this the scarier it becomes. Are our brains wired to need purpose and if our perceived purpose no longer exists or we have existed without purpose does our brain want to shut off? I find this interesting because what happens if you have achieved everything you have wanted? I have proven myself and accomplished everything I have wanted. I'm not finding pleasure in anything else that is self-indulging nor do I have any particular interest in helping others. That sounds pretty selfish, but I have no inner desire to help. I wonder if that is a manifestation of how I have viewed myself throughout life as being a wallflower. 

To be perfectly honest, I find no interest in being dead, but I'm not adverse to the idea of non-existence or at least with the hope of a fruitful afterlife. I think this is called "passive suicide", which basically means one won't move out of the way of an oncoming train had they found themselves in that situation; they won't put themselves in that situation on purpose.  

I think my way forward is by setting micro-goals. In a previous post I set a goal to self-publish a photography book. The main reason for that post is directly tied to this post. It's basically a way to keep my brain grounded by giving it a purpose. Has the answer to the purpose of life been staring us in the face this whole time? Could it simply be purpose is life. 

So I think a way for me to cope with purposelessness is to set micro-goals related to photography. This means I have to be more ambitious with new ideas and be persistent with active goals. 

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