You're right, there is no before or after, there's only now.

One has to create what one wants, it doesn't just happen. If you want good grades in school, you study; if you want to have a particular skill, you practice. I use to hate it when my stepmother would remind me that people weren't going to come beat down my door to meet me, that I had to go out there. But it is true. What you try to do is what you'll get better at, couch potatoes get better at being couch potatoes

It took me approximately 30 years of therapy and life to begin figuring that out. You only have your own experiences to work with, looking out the window at what others are doing doesn't help. Pick something, anything you might enjoy or think you might think you might enjoy, and work on that. I got out of my head very slowly by starting with reading (instead of daydreaming/fantasizing) and worked hard in 20 years of therapy. I don't know if I'd do it that same way or not if I had to do it again; I sometimes think about that, what I "could" have done differently, what time I wasted doing nothing, etc.

It's continuous too, it doesn't stop, you don't get happy and stay there. No such place. You just get to know yourself better and get comfortable at your job, expressing yourself.