I grew up in Europe in the early 1990s in a small community of <100 houses. All I saw growing up were salaried jobs-for-life and farming with little in between. I was indifferent at school but not bad at it (I partook in STEM competitions but didn't achieve anything outstanding, I didn't study for it either). (At this primary/secondary school stage I enjoyed physics and disliked mathematics, while later on (university) I disliked physics and enjoyed mathematics.)
It was humble but wonderful childhood. In a small place you don't select your social circle; the social circle selects you. That worked okay initially but over time I started to feel like a misfit. These places tend to be very narrow minded and conservative and conforming is important. Very early in secondary school I was introduced to programming and loved it and that was basically the end of my social life.
Prior to secondary school I would tinker with electronics, homemade batteries, that kind of thing; now I was fascinated by how computer understands programs. I wrote a tiny compiler for my own poor man's programming language towards the end of high school and at this point I was reading Chomsky's early works on language models (which formed the basis for parsing). That started a lifelong interest in computer science, and so I enrolled into CS program with interest in theory track. I already knew quite some systems stuff (enough to find systems classes boring) but not as well as I thought I did at the time.I was deeply interested in the theory subjects (computability, complexity, etc.) and did well in university, but was quite naive and almost looked down on hands-on software work. Anyway I was quite good at software engineering and so I joined a machine learning group where I worked on interesting stuff at the intersection of software and theory while pursuing degree in math and CS. I didn't care about money at all at this point and I'd say I was quite narrow as a person. I've never had girlfriend up to this point. I also had a bit of an inferiority complex at the time.
At around age 23 or 24 I was deciding whether to go for PhD, and two things made me decide against it. One is I worked on a problem (in computational topology) that was too hard for me and I realized there were people much smarter than me that were better suited for this field. (I guess it felt a bit like doing cycling competition with people with VO2max in the 80s.) Two was that the department didn't manage to secure the financing we assumed (highly paid stipends) and what was left for the year was ordinary university slave employment and I'd just lost rights to student accommodation.
That's when market reality hit me. I remember running some numbers assuming very aggressive savings (something like 80% which effectively meant Spartanic living) and it was so depressing. I think I felt poor for the first time in my life. Around this time I discovered MMM which I found too verbose. Then I came across ERE and the book sucked me in and I read it cover to cover. I loved the derivations, integrative systems thinking, it felt a lot like reading one of the best textbooks except the topic was life itself. (I have to confess I have a bit of a fetish for independent thinking, so that was definitely part of the pull.)
So I soon went hardcore savings mode, transitioned into industry; I lived in shared accommodation with many roommates. I often worked 10h days back then and having to wait for bathroom and sharing the room itself didn't feel exactly comfortable, but I was in hardcore mode and I was cutting all waste. (I'm INTJ, very introverted, very shy, and don't exactly enjoy company, so sharing a room was a huge compromise.)
I've worked in software industry since then. I changed jobs and countries in between. Fast forward, for the past few years I've been remote from a small town and recently the company soft-fired me (*), so I'm deciding whether to FIRE or take up another employment.
I have a house and 22x (**) minimum wages in liquid savings. I actually spend less than minimum wage net since I don't have rent, so my SWR for operating expenses is closer to 2.81%. My life is more than comfortable at this point. I didn't believe I'd get to this point with our lower salaries and 50%+ marginal tax rates, but here you go. (I feel like this is a micro-scale manifestation of "people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a decade".)
This is where it gets interesting. The prospect of being without a job for the first time in my life (and having the contract terminated by the company) induced incredibly strong feelings. Although I understand I will be more than okay and that I'm not in fact dependent on having a job, I still felt something like panic. I realized that despite thinking about ERE for so long, I am institutionalized (and so is everyone around me) and I have no idea how to go from here... I think it might be just the sun burning my eyes after stepping out of Plato's cave for the first time after listening and reading about this life outside for nearly 10 years.
(*) I was repeatedly (over the course of last 1.5 years) asked to relocate and transition into full time and I repeatedly refused.
(**) The number is >25x counting private pensions and >27x counting public pension rights.