Fascinating and
wiki-worthy thread. The decision of whether to make this kind of commitment because of a seeming lack of better options is truly pivotal, much like deciding whether to commit suicide.
I've been in the same situation before, of having failed relationships and failed businesses and careers make me want to give up and just stick to what's comfortable and seemingly safe. The problem is, that gets boring, and then there's a desire to reach out for more, which means leaving one's comfort zone once again and taking some risks. As time passes, you may come up with a way to overcome obstacles that seemed insurmountable before. Unfortunately, once you've made a commitment to a wife and kids, you don't have as much freedom anymore to pursue your dreams.
Fathom, it sounds like you are interested in entrepreneurialism but have run out of ideas. There are a lot of guys out there with entrepreneurial ideas but no one to help realize them. One possibility is to go to a site like
founder2be and find someone who is looking for a business partner.
I used that site to pitch my own business idea, and also reached out to my friends and family, but when no one was interested, I finally just gave up, got a boring job in corporate America, and got married, with the idea of running out the clock on the next few decades of this life in a similar manner as what Heartiste described in "This Is Your Life". Then I finally ran into someone on Facebook with a business idea that was slightly similar to mine, and I thought, "He has no particular interest in my idea, but if I were free, I would just help him with his idea, and use the success of that project as a springboard from which to launch my own idea."
(I was going to mentor this guy over the Internet in how to code, but he got distracted by his parents' urging him to get a job, and unfortunately I no longer have the option I had when I was single and jobless, of just moving a business partner such as him into my mom's house and coding the minimum viable product with him while living a minimalist lifestyle. I actually tried that once, with someone else; but after I moved the person in, they flaked and said they couldn't code after all. This taught me not to accept partnerships with people who don't already have a portfolio of past coding work to show that they're capable of it.)
There is definitely no shortage of business ideas out there waiting to be implemented. But most people who have the skills to implement them just want to work on their own ideas, or make big bucks working for already-established firms in corporate America. So, if you're willing to help someone implement their idea from scratch and launch a new startup, then
you stand out.