I've worked various jobs, but the most grueling one was at a glass factory. I worked for 4 years at the factory; part of it swing shift, part straight days, and part straight afternoons. I was mentally understimulated and depressed for various reasons. Working swing shift screwed up my sleep schedule, probably for the rest of my life. The upside is that I can go significant times without feeling tired. I think the longest stint I was awake was 38 hours with one hour of sleep.
I wouldn't want to do it again, but it made me thankful for the job and skills I have now.
I would not say brainfuck is obscure. Definitely esoteric, but it seems like every cs student and junior engineer has at least heard of it. Writing a compiler for it is a great starting project.
I don't see why not. I've had multiple positions in the industry. The ones where I was happiest and most productive where when I was emcoiraged to have work life balance.
I preciously worked for an insurance broker on a site that encouraged people to get active. Something we did was Aggregate data from various platforms (fitbit, Garmin, apple health, etc). We used a third party called Validic, but their implementation was subpar. One of their big selling points was a consistent data format between services, unfortunately this wasn't true. For certain service/activity combinations we need a work around for the data thag they sent us. If you could make a service that aggregated data from different services and provided them in a consistent format you'd make a killing.
This is one of the biggest problems I see for getting new friends as a millennial. About a year ago I got my amateur radio license. I started to talking to a few people locally and eventually went to club meetings and lunches. I'm in my mid-30s; almost everybody else involved in amateur radio in my area is old enough to be my parent or grandparent.
You didn't fail, you just jumped head first into the deep end. React is a great framework, but you need to learn the basics first.
If you want to learn react, I would start with the tutorials on the react site. This will help you wrap your mind around what is happening when things get more complex.
I'll answer you second question first, ham radio crash course is probably the most popular amateur radio you tuber.
I got licensed about a year ago and I'm still having a blast with it. There is the standard ways of communication via radio, voice and continuous wave (morse code). Most modern radios are able to be connected to a computer to communicate with other radios digitally. Digital modes are generally better for low power.
I have a lower end 20 watt radio and I can regularly talk to all of the continental united states, but depending on conditions I have reached South America and eastern Europe.
I got my license less than a year ago, but there is still an active amateur radio community. I'm apart of a few active amateur radio discords.
Between cw, digital modes, POTA/SOTA, YouTube, and everything that has been written in the last hundred years about radio there is a lot to learn. I joined because I like learning new things and radio has a lot to learn about.