Which Life is Better - Neckbeard or Normie?

[Lune]

I've been both. I've lived for years in my sisters basement off my family's money, spending all my time playing EQ and other video games while collecting many different greasy residues in my beard; no contact with the female gender for years. In many ways a carefree time... no worry about jobs, responsibilities, honey-do lists, just pure hedonism. But also very depressing because all of society basically looks down on you and you begin to internalize that. I was a disgusting gollum-like creature at the worst of it. I did this for most of my 20's. I watched friends and peers from high school and college get jobs, buy houses, and start families.

But then I got my shit together, got in shape, went to a professional doctoral program with excellent job prospects. I met a rich girl that I love and married her.

Now I have a house and, in a few years, a guaranteed high-wage job. I have a great relationship with the girl of my dreams who loves giving me blowjobs. But sometimes I look at my life and at the path ahead of me, waking up early working 40 hours a week, and I can't help but yearn for those neckbeard days, staying up until 3 AM doing Sebilis with my guildies while laughing my ass off in TS. Waking up at 11AM and doing it all over again. For large periods of that time I was truly happy and carefree. The lows were a lot lower, the highs weren't as high, but the baseline was comfy comfy. And I had absolute freedom.

In objective terms I've achieved all the things that neckbeard Lune dreamed about; the things that brought him unimaginable sadness and angst for not having. But I feel now that I've traded a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage, that this life does not fit me. Another part of me recognizes the powerful and near-universal tendency to want what we do not have, and the fact that I was depressed and suicidal back then, and I'm not now.

I know many of you have lived either or both of these lives. Which was better?