I made it 15 years on mostly willpower earning millions of dollars, but never worked for a FAANG in any capacity, was unemployed (and even homeless) for different stints starting out, and to this day still get asked why I don't have a CS or engineering degree.
And a Haiku-powered Claude Code could now probably one-shot most of the stuff I have ever banged my head on as hard as I could to figure out.
I am just reflecting on the past though. What will make you "successful" then won't be what makes you that now.
I lived in a 3 pyeong (about 100 sq ft) space for three years (I wasn't homeless, so I had it better than you). Still, I'm grateful that now I have a small 8 pyeong (about 260 sq ft) space. Thank you for sharing your experiences and emotions.
I want to succeed through willpower, just like you. As you know, most of my coding is done better by AI. Unless it's large scale programming, the work that comes to people like us is usually small scale, handled at the level of specific frameworks.
Nevertheless, I still believe there is a place for me somewhere (though that might be self hypnosis).
Thanks for the comment