I remember that in the scheme of things, i have won the galactic lotto. To ask for more afterwards? Well of course we want more. life is fabulous.
If this life isn't fabulous for you, do something else.
I tell young people not to paint themselves into a corner. And if they do..well they might have to get a bit of paint on their shoes and mess up that perfect BS that people expect of you.

we can't all be climate change scientists & save the world.
there are people who depend on you. that's where your real sense of accomplishment & satisfaction will come from.

So what are you doing to make sure that a year from now you can feel differently?

All of us are in the same boat, mucking along and doing what seems right as we go along. Your time was not wasted.

Every second of conscious awareness is a miracle beyond all miracles. Forget the past.

I'll still bet you don't want to be anyone else.

Keep on truckin'.

We all feel like that at times. I spent over three decades in fundamentalism. Was it a "waste"? Well -- yes and no. Life is weird like that. If it hadn't been religion it would have been something else. We all stumble through making mistakes, spectacularly misunderstanding things, etc., and then when we finally start to get a clue, it's all over but the shouting. No re-dos. Religion was just our particular mistake, and/or just didn't work out well for us.

My 2nd wife died 13 years into our marriage. Was that a "waste" because it didn't end when and in the way I wanted it to? We had a lot of great experiences together, and some not so great. We taught each other things. She died 12 years ago and I choose to remember with fondness the good parts. I could fixate on her final illness, what a soul-crushing grind of desperation it was for us both, and how to this day I haven't quite recovered financially from the medical expenses involved. I choose to honor the dead by remembering the best of them, not the worst. Maybe someone will return the favor for me some day.

I think it's like that with every misbegotten chapter in life, you learn what you can, do a post-mortem on it and then you reinvent yourself (yes, again). It's how life works. It's not some fairy tale where you get to play the triumphant hero. It's more like a living nightmare where you get to play the hapless foil to some drunken god. And yet, one still finds ways to laugh at the absurdity of it, and transcend it. At this point in my life I stand before you, a lampshade on my head, one foot stuck in a waste basket and the other trailing toilet paper, but I haven't let life get me down (much).

You got up and dressed, breathed in and out and you survived! Sounds like a success story to me