How do you find motivation to sell your life for peanuts?

Try changing your perspective. See each 50 bucks as an opportunity to do something of benefit to you, rather than focusing on wasted time of life.

Wow, I don't even know where to start. This OP is so insanely arrogant and ignorant, I can't even find the words to describe it.

I actually got a good laugh out of it personally.It sounds like something an honest kid would ask. Refreshing.

50 bucks an hour doing something I like is a lot better than nothing.

go work in foodservice for a little perspective.

But that's exactly the point! We're not working in foodservice. We have much better competencies. Less than one million Americans have the abilities required to be programmers. (That's less than 0.5% of the population!)