what apathy does to us or what has made us apathetic

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or more tritely phrased, what came first, the chicken or the egg?
i feel apathetic. i don't know if it's my circumstances that have caused my apathy, or my apathy that causes my circumstances to continue. and like the trite question, i am unsure if the answer really matters except in a purely abstract philosophical sense. results are what matter.
but basically the only thing i care about is that i don't care. i should care, but i don't.
it's hard to break out of. there are tons of rationalizations for not caring. i mean.. by not caring, i don't mean that i have given up doing anything. i still work. i still go to school. i still pay bills. but none of those things will have an immediate effect really. extra effort is required. the extra mile, if you will. the time put into creative projects that really matter to me. the resources i should devote to honing my skills and gaining experiences. but i just can't focus on anything. i write snippets of songs that never get finished, play them obsessively for a while, and then forget them in favor of new things. i'm constantly making new PIECES of things, but never finishing anything.
i write free association stuff and riff on different feelings and rhythms... i write down compelling ideas that hit me out of nowhere or from dreams or from something i've read.. but my writing is even worse than my music.. i rarely START beyond note stage, let alone actually finish anything.
i wonder all the time if it's all a joke. i mean, i'm 31, living with my folks, working in a gas station even though i have a college degree because i realized i hate teaching and i'm terrible at it and i hate feeling like i'm defrauding my students. i'm in school for some kind of paper pushing law office flunky sort of job, which would be fine since at least it would be an improvement, but i don't know if i'll actually land anything. my previous school experience leaves me with lots of doubts about that.. i'm the kind of person that will excel academically, and then completely fail as soon as i have to apply any knowledge. probably a lot because i can't get along with people really. they weird me out and i weird them out even more.
so.. all that being said.. it's hard to care about things that i should be applying myself to, when it just seems to punish me. either i don't have resources and i'm maxed out on time and money, or i just can't get my head together, or a combination of the two..
lately with my spare time i just find myself playing games or watching way too much tv. because when i sit down to actually do anything, my head is all over the place and i'm either making up 80 million different concepts that i'll never finish or i'm just completely stuck and feeling like everything i do is BS. it's frankly easier to recover from the latter.. that always passes.. i know i don't really think everything i do is BS, and that i just need a break. but if i can't finish anything, what's the point of starting anything, you know?
so the real question that i'm getting at here with this chicken and egg thing is... am i just making excuses? i don't understand why i would do that, but i also sort of feel that i'm full of s**t somehow. it seems like i SHOULD be able to accomplish SOMETHING with my life. i guess in the end i can't decide if i'm just being a whiny b***h or if i'm just beating my head on a brick wall and need another approach.

Based on the description it could be anxiety or executive dysfunction.
Not sure about not wanting to do things though... It could actually not be apathy but hidden anxiety or executive dysfunction. For instance, my friend said she didn't study to the exam in the weekend and instead watched tv and said she was disappointed because she was so irresponsible. Then I told her about demand avoidance and she realized it was actually anxiety

DOS - A lot of what you say sounds to me like AD(H)D, but the autism industry continues to invent an ever-growing number of other possibilities.

Many years ago, before I had even heard of ASD, I remember saying to my wife that I was only ever capable of doing the things which absolutely needed to be immediately done.

Except that every now and again I would become obsessed with some kind of project, and would devote myself exclusively to that project to the exclusion of everything else.

I spend hours and hours simply staring at the wall, while my brain is in overdrive.

Now that I live alone and live on a pension, it is less of a problem - I can do nothing for days on end (if I feel like it) and there is nobody else to either know or care.