1st case, I would probably carry on... Knowledge for knowledge's sake, or a peripheral awareness (or delusion?) of being something more than being just often annoyed meat...
2nd case, I would carry on and go wherever my capacities/interests carried me, based on just whatever tattered remnants of The Faustian Spirit might impel me to keep going...
BTW, I am sorry to hear that your life is closer to the latter... I would still just flip off the world and make my own world in such case...