I've felt exactly this way. A tactic that kept me going for another few CV-like things was to pick something orthogonal in my writing to optimize, so I could focus on that while writing what I needed to: writing without the letter 'e', conforming to a meter, writing sentences in alphabetical order, etc.
Took it.
I'm a 22-year-old mathematics graduate student, moving to Boston next year.
I was recommended HPMoR by another Boston math grad student, followed the authors' notes to read most of the sequences, and then started following lesswrong, although I didn't create an account until recently.
I can't say how I came to actually be a rationalist, though---most of the sequences seemed true or even obvious in hindsight when I first read them, and I've always had a habit of remembering "x tells me y is true" instead of "y is true" when x tells me y is true.
I'm signed up for cryonics. (Current probability estimates 90% that it preserves enough information to be reversible, 95% that I'll die with enough notice to be preserved, 50% that humanity'll advance far enough to reverse it, and 70% that CI'll survive that long.)
I'm vegetarian for carbon efficiency and because the animals that produce most of our meat have negative utility from awful conditions. I don't think sentience is the right standard; is there a good past lesswrong discussion about that?
Ukrainian Army, e.g. Army of Drones. They're a funding-constrained little guy fighting back against a big guy who's also one of the world's top few tyrants.