The answer is the answer billions of people have always done:
Distract yourself from it.
What else is the purpose of work? School? TV? Movies?
Socializing? Its a distraction from ourselves. Facing the hollow
monster within can drive a person to madness and another to
contemplation.
I don't think there is anything magical about the nothingness.
It is an emotion like any other emotion. But were a scan to be
made of the brain of what it sees as the map of the body at the
moment that one feels empty, I wouldn't be surprise if the brain
scan shows an outline within an outline - a shell with an
emptiness within.
It's an emotional state, curable by distraction. Even what you
are doing now is part of the cure. This is socializing. Talking
about it with others. Seeing if it is a relatable point. You're
already on the path to a cure.
How do I handle my nothingness?
I analogize it to a current of water running underneath the
current of my consciousness. It's always there - this
melancholy. It's a part of existence. I embrace it and draw from
it as a deep well of creativity. At the same time, I move from
project to project, thing to thing, jumping from rock to rock,
interest to interest, or I go swimming in a river flowing
overhead for a time when I don't want to face the river below.
I don't like going in that water though. It's there. I draw from
it now and again and I'm continually drinking from it. But I
don't like it to envelop me. It won't kill me - the nothingness
*is* a part of me as much as I'm a part of the Universe and
humanity and life itself - but I might lose my sense of
direction.
There's no north/south/east/west/up/down in those depths. No
navigational cues, so we could be travelling towards marvelous
things and not even be able to see it. But I believe something
marvelous is always coming, no matter what point you are at in
life.
