> everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments

Your comment suggests that the driver of your (and your peers) anhedonia is some lingering threat of some future lockdown by governments? Is that what you're saying? And, is that actually the case or is it just the easiest cause to put your finger on?

I understand that period was really rough for so many reasons. But a lot of the angst I see among friends/family/coworkers today isn't from the lockdowns per se, but it's more from having to slow down and consider some heavy, almost-existential questions surrounding their relationships, life, fulfillment, social supports, and purpose. And, at least for me, struggling with how many of the things I thought I knew about myself turned out to not really be true. Lockdowns may have forced me to see and acknowledge these issues, but they were always there.

It's not angst, it's real.

Though I'm young, my work is international. I was separated from my girlfriend, apartment, coworkers, and entire livelihood in a different nation, at a position one could say I spent much of my life up to that point studying and working toward. My colleagues were separated from their families and children. Some lost their homes because they were let go from their jobs as a result. Some older friends of mine divorced because of this. Some lost their businesses that they spent their lives building. One of them committed suicide. This was a guy in his late 50s with two children and a wife, who had been forcibly separated from each other on opposite sides of the world for over a year.

Short of wars, there has never been such a brutal and absolute upheaval of population movements for civilian populations.

There are a lot of people my age who went through this type of experience, and that is one reason why I think the original poster sees more people with less joie de vivre. I am also saying it is lucky for people who just had lockdowns at home or had their lives confined to one locale or even country, or who at least had some years of "living" their lives before this happened. What I mean by that is people who at least had their 20s and maybe even 30s to build a career, life, and family, on top of their years of studying and schooling. But for those of us just getting our careers started, and for people who had international careers and lives split between countries, there were several years of nightmares along with the knowledge now that, at any moment, all this could instantly happen again.

Sure, anyone could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But it was people and governments turning on one another like wolves that was a sharp mask-off moment, especially for those of us in our formative years. That is a different type of crushing, and utterly stultifying, effect. Because it is not a random accident, but rather a cold and calculating opposition by others. All I know is that I spent my life sacrificing short-term rewards as I worked toward long-term payoffs, and as soon as I started to see results, everything went up in flames. Everything. If motivation is squelched for major life projects and milestones, I think it is clear how motivation is also squelched for personal projects or side projects. If you're older, and if your life wasn't split or shattered across the globe, be thankful is all I can say.

But for me and others in my age bracket and positions, there was this natural, sharp turn toward instant gratification, which I wholly support and understand. This is of course anecdotal, and I am not implying that it is a universal sentiment, but just offering an example to answer the original question/statement of people "working on nothing". It is because we have nothing to "work toward".

This pairs pretty well with my experience. (I'm a little older, late 20s/early 30s)

I grew up in a upper-middle class income family, I was first entering high school when my parents were hit hard by the housing crisis in 2008. (Facebook also just started dominating during this time) Eventually the economy "recovered" just long enough for everyone to start telling us that we should sacrifice our 20s while we had the energy so we can enjoy our 30s. (buy a house, have a steady career, start traveling, ect)

Yeah, that advice really turn out to reflect what actually happened.

Travel? - Can't because of quarantine. Quarantine ended, to bad your relationship ended during quarantine, so you don't have anyone to travel with. Lucky enough to have been working remotely? To bad housing prices soared. Decided to invest? Hope you weren't one of the millions screwed over by any of those several historic finical fraud cases that seem to occur multiple times every year. Parents getting to old to work and lost their retirement in 2008? Uhhh... hope they/you win the lottery?

Anyway, all this is really just a long way of agreeing with OP.

Appreciate it, friend. I really do feel as though older generations than us do not understand or care about our situation at all. For example, look at how the first reply to me was gaslighting and seeking to minimize our situation. They do not even attempt to understand or care, because they already "got theirs". Yet they feel as though they need to chime in anyway, telling us that it's all in our head, or that we should bootstrap ourselves harder.

Yea, how can we do that when people become frozen within borders, deported, banned, restricted. We're supposed to take up arms and hijack a plane? Swim? Only to get arrested upon arrival? These older people are fucking high off their own golden years' supply.

And people who are confined to their own narrow, national locality, of nearly any age, especially do not understand.

Cheers.