Thank you in advance for donating your time and wisdom. I tried to keep this post as succinct as possible, with limited success; my situation has several synergistically negative factors. I came to asktrp because I don't need platitudes or words of encouragement. I need a strategy from some people who have a clue.

I'm 26, I have severe anhedonia, and depression to the degree that I spend a good amount of time lying unreponsive on the floor, and mild social anxiety. I don't have a social life and never have had one (besides a few close friends online). I don't have a family. I don't have a career. I thoroughly dislike living, but I haven't killed myself, so naturally I wish to do everything I can to enhance my life.

To be dedicated to a path, one needs a goal. I don't have a goal, or passions. I have no basic premises upon which to build a logical framework and dedicate myself.

I have interests, hobbies. If I could just stick to one of them longterm, I'd have a career, and I wouldn't be here right now. Due to the lack of a basic life goal, every interest I have is "motivation based" not "dedication based".

The only goal-oriented activity I cling to is lifting. I can stay dedicated to lifting because it can't possibly be a waste of my time -- I already decided that if I'm not going to kill myself, I'm going to try to make my life better. That requires lifting. I get no enjoyment from lifting, but since it's grounded in logic, I can stick to it with willpower.

With every other activity, I become numb to my own success very quickly. There's no reward for long term projects. They stay interesting for a week (motivation) and then I stop working on them (no goal-based dedication). I can't "imagine the reward and work towards it" because there is no reward anymore. The reward was only whim, and now it's gone.

I have issues making happiness itself the end goal, partly because there's no clear logical path from A to B with that, and partly because I've actually felt happy so infrequently that I literally can not even remember what it feels like. It's hard to be motivated by something that you can't even imagine.

I'm so damn mentally and emotionally exhausted from trying so hard for so long to get anywhere longterm. I've been struggling to get my shit together since before puberty. I felt "done" with life when I was 15. I'm physically tired every day from the moment I wake up, irrespective of how much I slept or my diet. Often to the point that I can't get shit done because I'm just too tired.

I've got plenty of things going for me, though. I'm lucky enough that my dead family left me with an inheritance large enough that I'm able to live frugally off of it for several more years. If I weren't a shitshow mentally I could easily create a career for myself before I even have to worry about working. I'm also in good shape and have a probably 8/10 face. I'm sure plenty of people reading this, in my shoes, would be living a fun and fulfilling life right now, stresslessly pursuing your dreams, fucking lots of girls and having a healthy social life.

I'm not particularly introverted but I do not enjoy the company of the vast majority of people. A good analogue is the "high iq communication problem". I don't think I have a noteworthy IQ, but for me it's just the inability of most people to use basic logic in anything they do or say. I can and do interact with such people pleasantly, it's just painfully monotonous for me to do so. I don't feel "above" these people, I don't have my head in my ass. I just do not enjoy their company. I would love to have a network of friends, but I can not even begin to imagine how to create a network of people I actually want to interact with; such people seem in my experience to be far too rare offline.

Some more notes:

If a plan's first step is to see a doctor, it's not going to work. I don't have the mental state or willpower to get myself to a doctor.

The only time I've felt happiness in my entire life was a short period during a relationship with a girl. I have never felt the emotion of happiness while single, not even as a young child. Because of the fact that I will literally lie on the floor all day unresponsive otherwise, I'm currently using an online relationship as a crutch to trick my brain into thinking there's hope so that I can maybe climb out of this hole. I realize this is heresy, but I'm entirely confident based on the anti-depressant effects of romance for me in the past, that if I had a fulfilling romantic relationship in real life, my depression would be lifted enough for me to build a foundation for myself and not need a crutch anymore. But that isn't going to happen, really a cart-before-the-horse and catch-22 situation. So I need to do this without crutches.

I had extremely bad social anxiety to the point that I couldn't make phone calls or walk into a store. I managed to conquer that over the last couple years to the point that I appear to be a regular, functional human on the outside. The key there was small discrete steps from start to finish.

So there's my life story. I have tried the "pick a thing and stick to it with sheer willpower" strategy for years, it's not going to work. Seems each issue creates resistance to improvement in any other issue. I need something that takes into account severe anhedonia, depression, limited social opportunities, and the weariness from years of futile effort.

Anyone got a step by step plan? lol