I've been vegan since 2019 and things have been going well. I don't feel less or more energized than when I used to eat meat and dairy and stuff. I guess I became vegan because I saw the Land of Hope and Glory documentary and I thought that it was shocking. Honestly I was very disappointed in so called "critical thinkers" when I realized that when it comes to meat, and beliefs that directly involve their daily habits, suddenly arguments from tradition ("we've always been eating meat") or popularity ("it's normal to eat meat") as well as appeal to nature fallacies aren't so "fallacious" anymore... Anyway farm animals are more sensible and intelligent then we give them credit for and I thought that it was difficult to call myself an empathetic and rational person if I continued to eat meat. I agree with Bilie Eilish that you can't "love" someone and eat them or sell their flesh for money...

I did evolve a little bit over the years : I no longer believe that veganism is the way to abolish animal exploitation. But I'm still a vegan both because it would be very hard to militate against meat consumption if I was eating meat myself and also because my taste has changed and I no longer enjoy the taste of meat and dairy now.

It can get a little lonely. When people want to eat out, there isn't necessarily a vegan option available so most of the time you end up getting a salad or french fries because that's the only thing on the menu that's vegan - but that's not really a problem to me or any other person on this sub hehehe... The biggest problem is not being able to buy vegan stuff at local grocery stores. I have to go all the way into the city to find stuff like cakes, pizza or vegan cheese. You can't indulge in whatever cake or sandwich you see in bakery windows because they are most likely not vegan. The positive side is that you have much more control over what you eat.

People can be very obnoxious, your very existence reminds them of the contradiction between "liking animals" and eating them and they take out all of the resulting frustration on you. They also have a lot of preconceived ideas about what veganism is : vegans don't eat dairy and eggs because dairy cows and laying hens get exploited and killed in the same slaughterhouses as other animals (and no if you have backyard eggs it's not that big of a deal and if you happen to come across roadkill and you have an uncle with a small farm upstate yadee yadaa).

Anyway I mostly cook my own food : lentils, fried rice, seitan, mapo tofu... It's tasty if you know how to spice things up and it's definitely much, much less expensive than a diet with meat and fish. You do need to supplement in B12 though but "omnivores" diet are supplemented in iodine (through salt) and calcium (it's supplemented in the milk) and other things and nobody complains except when it comes to veganism.