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It surely gets better if you can make the necessary changes to your life to improve this.
I never hear anyone talk like this who doesn't live in the suburbs with a huge commute. I live in a city and can get to work in 15 minutes without a car.
My schedule is:
- 6:00am: Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, get dressed.
- 6:45am: Leave for work.
- 7:00am: Arrive at work.
- 12:00pm: Lunch hour.
- 4:00pm: Leave work.
- 4:15pm: Arrive home and unwind.
- 5:00pm: Workout.
- 5:30pm: Prepare Dinner.
- 6:15pm: Eat Dinner.
- 6:45: Clean up kitchen and other parts of home.
- 7:00pm: Movies, Video Games, Social Time, Sex Time.
- 10:00pm: Go to bed
That gives me a full 6 hours between finishing work and going to bed. If I choose an easy dinner, I hardly have to do anything less than fun after work, and I work in a cool part of town so I don't actually have to go commute anywhere. I can be drinking at a bar within 5 minutes of clocking out, and I don't have to drive home. Any other errands I make in a week are within walking distance of my home or work.
Before I moved, my schedule was:
- 5:45am: Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, get dressed.
- 6:30am: Leave for work.
- 8:00am: Arrive at work.
- 12:00pm: Lunch hour.
- 5:00pm: Leave work.
- 6:30pm: Arrive home and unwind.
- 7:00pm: Prepare Dinner.
- 7:45pm: Eat Dinner.
- 8:15pm: Clean up kitchen and other parts of home.
- 8:30pm: Movies, Video Games, Social Time, Sex Time.
- 9:45pm: Go to bed
So that gave me an entire 3.25 hours after getting home, giving me no time to fit a workout in without giving up other leisure activities. This doesn't even factor in that everywhere else I needed to run errands was a 15-30 minute drive away.
The largest predictor of divorce is a commute longer than 45 minutes.
I've had some pretty long commutes in the past because my work location changes every few years. I enjoy the work, though, so that helps, but I've still been feeling the OP lately. I'm in my late 30s and I don't have kids and "fun" doesn't really do it for me anymore. More and more I need to feel like I'm doing something worthwhile instead of aimless hedonism. I'll figure it out, though, it's just time to make some, as you say, necessary changes again.
Making sure you have time is important. My schedule breakdown isn't really the blueprint of my life. I belong to social groups, and I volunteer. I have hobbies and projects that I work on.
If you don't have enough unstructured time, you'll never have the opportunity to build structure around it.