That emptiness is a very common feeling. Learning and doing more absolutely helps with it, though. Look into the concept of revolutionary optimism a little bit if you start reading again.

Been slowly working my way through le Carré's Karla Trilogy, but slowly starting to hate it more bit by bit. I still think spy stories are better if the setting is the Cold War.

I think now I prefer nonfiction and theory books more now, though, as I continue to learn. Should probably focus more on actually getting through them rather than reading snippets or shorter works as they come up, especially since sometimes I feel I'm not getting the full picture as I'm not entirely confident in my foundation of knowledge. Got a lot of stuff I'll probably have to reread at some point.