Sounds like you're in the middle of a classic existential internal debate.
You are in excellent company @Worriedsister223 so many great minds have studied and pondered on the purpose of our day in and day out repetitive but fairly short exisitence.
"In the twentieth century, Heidegger held that the meaning of life is to live authentically or (alternatively) to be a guardian of the earth. Sartre espoused the view that life is meaningless but urged us nonetheless to make a free choice that would give our lives meaning and responsibility.
Camus also thought that life is absurd and meaningless. The best way to cope with this fact, he held, is to live life with passion, using everything up, and with an attitude of revolt, defiance, or scorn.
William James held that life is meaningful and worth living because of a spiritual order in which we should believe, or else that it is meaningful when there is a marriage of ideals with pluck, will, and the manly virtues;
Bertrand Russell argued that to live a meaningful life one must abandon private and petty interests and instead cultivate an interest in the eternal; Moritz Schlick argued that the meaning of life is to be found in play; and A. J. Ayer asserted that the question of the meaning of life is itself meaningless."
I think in modern times most people boil it down to:
- Give your life a higher purpose by choosing to focus on something bigger outside your individual self - can be religion for some, can be an achievement of some sort that takes a lot of effort (climb Everest, ultra marathons), or a noble cause (finding a cure for disease, rasing money for charity, getting laws changed).
- Nurturing the next generation and having part of you travel forward through time with that - having children but also works for childfree people who nurture children some way in their jobs
- Being part of the future through something you create that lasts and impacts future generations - artists, writers, film makers etc
- Finding joy in day to day life by either making changes, or reframing how you feel about what you are currently doing.
Most of us are getting by with a combination of the above.