On the Fermi Paradox

"The Fermi paradox is the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence." - Wikipedia
In essence, the fermi paradox is concerned with the simple question; "Where are all the aliens?" In the 50s, physicist Enrico Fermi has been atributed as asking "but where is everybody?" during a conversation with collagues. Nowadays, a large part of the paradox is that no artificial structures, like Dyson swarms/spheres have been noticed. These are commonly thought of as very likely for an interstellar civilization.
There have been many hypotheses and potential solutions for the paradox. From stay-at-home civilizations who, well, stay home, to the idea that life is just that rare, these hypotheses are varied. Now, of course, we can't prove any, not yet at least, but some theories are more accepted and preferred. Isaac Arthur has a great playlist on the subject.
While I personally prefer the idea that intellegent civilisations are just plain rare, and that while the universe is very, very old, it is also comparatively young to how long it will live. Space is also, as you may know, really, really big. With this in mind, I believe alien civilisations do exist somewhere out there, but i do not think humanity will meet them in even a million years. Hopefully I'll still be alive then.
Of course, the idea and concept of the wise Precursor civilisations is pretty fun to work with. And so, i wanted to include one. That eventually spiraled into the War Of Thirteen Billion Stars and also the Tteglik. So, in essence, i just dialed back the rarity of life.
Indeed, within the galactic history of my setting, there have been a grand total of nine intellegent, spacefaring species. Five precursor species, one being the precursors. Humanity, the Tteglik, and two other, so far unknown ones. They really play no part in the story, but, oh well. I excused the lack of any noticable megastructures with time. The old races built many, many big, easily recognizable structures, but that was over 2 million years ago. Said structures have now long since degraded to near non-functionality.
So, while I personally do not believe aliens are out there, they do make for decent story material.