figured I'd post this here since I'm sure it has the highest concentration of people in tech/programming related fields, and actually has people that offer constructive feedback...

I am not a person that struggles with motivation. If I want to learn a new subject, I learn it. If I want to pick up a new hobby, I do the work to figure it out. If I want to get in shape, I get in shape. But over the past few months - every day, I come into my office, sit down at my desk, and it is an absolute war to force myself to do my job if there isn't a time sensitive aspect to it. It’s not like I'm relaxing or entertaining myself or anything like that. I pull up what I need to work on, try to think about the problem I'm trying to solve, and it's like the windows spinning wheel is going, but...nothing happens.

Every day around 3 or 4pm, I start freaking out, realizing I've gotten almost nothing done, and then the onset of a mild panic (I guess out of fear of being fired) is enough to finally start to get an actual output from my mental processes. I end up working late to make up for it, so every day, I end up spending 9 or more hours at the office, to really get only 3-4 hours of actual work done, and, because this keeps happening - by the time I get home, I'm so stressed out, both from that end-of-day panic and from not being able to fix it, that all I can do is try to shut my brain off by watching something mindless I don't even enjoy.

I am clearly burned out, but the real problem is that this is actually the second time this has happened to me in three years, and while both times involved crappy job situations in which I felt trapped, and both times there were some life related stressors surely amplifying the situation, I'm starting to wonder if I'm simply not the right personality type for a purely technical field. At the same time, there are so many conflicting variables involved this time that I’m struggling to sort through, but I really don't think I could survive another one of these if I end up making this mistake again – so I figured I should probably get some second opinions to my own.

In my last role, I had about a 50/50 split between time spent in solo technical/analytics work and standard business operations working with others in the company. My current job was sold to me as being closer to 75/25 in favor of solo technical work, but it's really ended up being more like 95%. I work in an office, but no one on my team is in this office, so I'm basically a remote employee that still commutes. It's a small but successful company, and my overall boss is a borderline genius but he is constantly being pulled in 20 different directions, so I fluctuate between having almost nothing to do and having complex projects dumped on me with little direction and having to figure it out on my own, which wouldn't be as big of an issue if I had experience in this industry, but I don’t, so all I really have to fall back on are my technical skills. Seems to me that there are four possibilities:

1) The job is fine, but I’m in the wrong role: this job really isn’t that bad. It’s frustrating not having opportunities to add value, but my boss is nice, I’m not being hounded for my productivity level or anything, I have a lot of latitude, and the compensation is good. If most people with my skillset would love to have this job, how can I blame the job? Writing sql and building models all day is just not what I’m wired to do. I’m probably similar to my dad, personality wise. He started as an engineer, but quickly learned he made a better manager of engineers than an actual engineer. I’m an effective leader and enjoy figuring out how different pieces fit together within larger systems of people. Just doing technical work, I start to feel like a cpu that’s being run 24/7 at a constant overclock.
2) It’s the job: if I were in a role with the same title but a little more interaction, feedback, and opportunity to add value, I would be fine
3) It’s my life outside of work: I’m not interacting much with people outside of work. I’m not dating anyone, and while covid certainly didn’t help, I haven’t done the work to try and build a new social circle after having moved cities, yet again. Only problem with this theory is that I do currently live with a good friend of mine, I do have one hobby that’s somewhat social, and I do have a pretty awesome dog - and the last time I got burned out, I had none of those things, and no lockdowns to blame it on.
4) My overall career goals/priorities are not aligned with things I care deeply about: I played poker professionally for four years after school, and being a cash game player, I seem to have broken the normal human reward mechanisms for status/achievement, along with the value of money. I’ve had money, and I’ve been broke. I’ve traveled to exotic places, and I’ve traveled to shithole casinos. I’ve lived in nice places, and I’ve lived in shitholes. None of it seemed to have much of a correlation with my happiness. I have a lot of ideas for ways to have an actual impact on things (and not grandiose ideas on how to fix society - viable ideas about how to use analytics to solve problems that may reduce specific types of human suffering), but I seem to be stuck in a mode where I’m running on pure ego. I tell myself that if I just get to the end of the day, I’ll be ok. If I get to the weekend, I’ll be ok. If I get to the next rung of the career ladder, things will be better, but they never are.

I’m 31, so if it’s #1, and I don’t change my long-term role soon, it will be harder to fight being pigeonholed into my current role down the road. I would probably go the route of an MBA from UT if I settle on this, but that's a tough school, and I don’t know how the hell I will manage studying for the gmat in my current mental state. If I act like it’s #3 and it’s not, then it will only mask the issue for a while. If I treat 1, 2, or 3, and it ends up being 4, then I’ll be too old to go back to school, the risk to pursue it will be too high, or I’ll have a family and won’t be able to, and I will regret it forever.

I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point, I’m not sure I would even care if I am fired, because at least that would mean that something would have to change. All I really know is that continuing to pretend nothing is wrong is the worst choice I can make, so any input would be greatly appreciated.