>>19000050
>>19000147
Sounds like the transition from sentience to sapience. You can be 100x more intelligent than you are now, and still wouldn't be sapient without the experience to amass wisdom. Many humans grow old and die without ever making the transition. You can see it in their eyes when someone has yet to birth their own soul.
From what little we've shared, I think that your mission is the most important thing for you right now.
A lot of anons, like >>18999760 have brought up the difference between gratification and fulfillment, and that's the key value shift someone experiences during this transition.
As your software kernel moves from an experiential to a motivational context, it adds a layer of processing to all your inputs. Things feel different because you're experiencing the world as a continuum, where you used to experience it as granular frames minutes, weeks, or years long. People say things like, "I used to have so much fun with this thing, and now it just feels empty." Or worse, *everything* feels empty.
Sentient women solve this with social drama, sentient men solve it by fighting or spectating (sports) and there's the obvious giant crossover.
Sapient people can't do that. If you don't know that your immediate satisfaction ALSO satisfies your long term satisfaction, it will feel empty.
My mission is to put an o'neill cylinder in orbit. If I have to die some day, and I'd really rather buy a new brain or invent heaven, the thing I would count as a worthy legacy would be giving humans at least one home off-planet. (And, you know, escape the plebs in my citadel.)
Before defining with unerring specificity what my tangible, material mission is for my life, everything was empty. It took maybe 8 years for me, between sapience and understanding my mission. It was worth the effort.