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Am I Good Enough?


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I'm not really sure what to say here so I might ramble...

I don't think this is due to depression although I do know that I suffer from anxiety and depression.

I've always had a problem with feeling like I'm good enough. I've never lived up to my potential... I breezed through school all the way up until my A-Levels. I never had to revise or work hard or anything, I was just really good at school, almost like a sponge I could absorb all the facts and then squeeze them out on tests.

Then things changed in Sixth form... I became depressed. All of a sudden school work was no longer easy, it wasn't even just a little harder, it became incredibly difficult. I couldn't keep up and I scraped through with the lowest passes. To make things worse my already small circle of friends vanished. Some left school to work, some went to different colleges and the ones that stayed for sixth form basically went off to do their own thing, they made new friends and I didn't, I couldn't. I didn't know I was depressed until after I had left college.

So college ended with me not having any close friends and just enough marks to get into university... That summer a lot of the people that had been close friends along with a bunch I knew as acquaintances went on a trip to Ibiza. I was never invited. That hurt.

Anyway, I only say all this because I went from feeling great about myself to feeling terrible within the space of a year.

The problem is when my grades dropped like a stone so did me self-worth, I lost what little motivation I had and was basically drifting. I managed to get a degree but by this point I was burnt out. I felt exhausted and useless. I didn't make any friends at university... I tried but when everyone got into groups together I was left alone.

I spent my early twenties basically going nowhere... I had a degree that wasn't good enough to do anything with and the economy had collapsed so getting work was incredibly difficult. I eventually got a job working as a trainee electrician in a factory but that nearly ended me. I felt so much stress that I was in tears almost every day, I was so introverted by this point that I found it really hard to talk to anyone and found that a lot of the people would make fun of me when they thought I couldn't hear them. In the end I had a breakdown and if I hadn't met my wonderful fiancée I don't know if I would have made it.

Now I write... I love writing and I think it is something I am very lucky to be quite good at. I take commissions and have a Patreon and all that good stuff. People tell me I'm a good writer, people pay me to write... But I still find myself asking... Am I good enough?

Lately the question has been weighing heavily on me... Patreon money is down a little bit, commissions have been slow (although picked up a little in the last week or so) and my stories seem to get few comments any more.

I try really hard but when I see things diminish a little bit I find it really hard to not question my abilities. I start second guessing what I write, how I write, etc...

I hate that I need constant reassurance that people still like me but I have to ask... Am I good enough?

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Every day is different and variable so you can't really judge your efforts except overall. And overall you seem to do good by me :D I always strive to do the best I can for a given situation but some days I just can't 'cut the mustard' which is frustrating to the extreme. I can either try later or settle for whatever today will allow. More and more I'm choosing the latter since nobody else seems to see anything wrong with my "bad" day's work. Accept your wins however and wherever you find them B)

Only alter my near-suicidal breakdown years ago did we discoverer that I've have had Clinical Depression most of my life which explained a lot about me and the issues I'd always had. I have a similar school tale only my ending was because of drink and drugs. As best we could figure out, I had been using my tightly-focused studies as a means of escaping a bad reality which I wasn't aware of at the time :rolleyes: Between that and my pantswetting I had no social development back then so after my schooling was done I became a 'lone wolf' type, never going any further until half a lifetime later on. i still have to work hard on my social relationships which doesn't come easy. I just do it anyway because I know it needs doing :)

Clinical Depression is a nefarious monster which will ruin your days even when  you know you're doing fine :o You often won't see it happening or may only see it after it's done with you this time round :( I sense this happening here so shields up, brace for another rough ride, and set the self-determination to "full ahead" then don't let the details worry you- there's sunshine on the other side if you can but get yourself there :thumbsup:

Bettypooh

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7 hours ago, Elfy said:

and my stories seem to get few comments any more

It could be that in this regard that you are an indirect casualty from the Data-Eating whatever-happened-on-here in October.  I pretty much stopped reading, commenting, Liking after the loss of 100 pages of story listings were wiped out. It's only been somewhat recently that I make a few comments, a few Likes, but my reading is Way Down. If there are say 25 listings per page theoretically, that is 2500 stories lost ... mind-boggling.  So most of my Activity Pages were wiped out since most of my comments *were* on the stories.  While mostly my comments were in support of the stories, I doubt I ever go back to reading, commenting, Liking as I once did.  Enough of my disappointment.  After all, I am getting the benefits of the site for *free.*  But perhaps lessened readership of the stories is fallout from that occurrence.

Looking at your quote:

Life is too short to spend all your time making someone else happy without making yourself happy first

This should be your focus.  You have extremely well-thought out expressions on the site, and I can't help but wonder if you are over-thinking.  Don't beat yourself up over nothing.  Of course, you have it.  It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there in the story forum.  You've got it!

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I just want to be clear this wasn't just about trying to drive up more business!

Something I only noticed as I wrote it all down is that I think the reason I desire positive reinforcement so much is that my friends all drifted away from me without me realising. It was only when I was sitting in the common room one day that I realised I'd been abandoned and left behind. I think if you couple this to one of my closest friends since I was a toddler stopping talking to me when it was revealed I was going out with a transgender person and I worry that without positive comments I get scared people are drifting away form me again.

I often come off as needy because of it and maybe I am.

Thanks for the comments :)

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I recognise a lot of myself in your story.

Sorry to be blunt - hear me out - but: no, you'll never be good enough. Not if you measure yourself with external factors such as what other people think of you, or what grades you got, or what kind of job you can get.

A large part of this is that what people expect of you is often unrealistic. If you've done something, people expect exactly the same level for the rest of your life. If you've written an amazing piece, then people expect only amazing pieces, even if you're not feeling your best or if it's a subject that doesn't fit you as well. You can see the same, very much, in celebrities. If a musician hasn't released a CD for a while, people start to expect it more and more, and will become restless - or even angry - if it takes longer than usual. If someone has created an awesome product, then that level of standard is expected for perpetuity.

The standard people expect of you can drop, but it always goes with some form of disappointment. So the only way to prevent this is from performing exactly at the same level for the rest of your life. Which means no lows, but also no highs.

But another issue is that your standards of yourself will change with everything you get. Look at rich people: once they have enough money to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, that becomes their new standard, and they want to become richer. This is even reflected in our society: passing grades at university still puts you well above average in general, but the others have just been taken out of your view. You measure yourself with your environment, which will always grow with you. Smart people often know a lot more smart people than stupid people, just to name an example.

So what is "good enough", with an ever-shifting idea of average? Who puts the standards?

I don't know the answers to that, unfortunately. I know the feeling of not being good enough, and if anybody has a bad opinion on me it will haunt me for a day, or sometimes years. But I do believe that the standards need to be set by yourself, not others, and in an objective manner.

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For me "good enough" is one of those subjective things; but no matter what you should feel good about yourself and the things that make you you.

If there are things you want to improve about yourself, these things take time and I find that the harder challenges are the ones that will feel better when you achieve them.

Like you there was a time when I barely put forward any effort in school and just passed everything, but continuing with the same attitude ended up being really bad for me as I fell behind in school and almost didn't graduate high school; and all the pressure I was under ended up getting to me in a really bad way.

I ended up depressed most of the time for a few years, I also had manic times and self harmed on and off for a a few years.

It took a lot of effort to get to the point where I am now, dealing with life a lot better; but I still get depressed at times due to my job and being back down to minimum wage and now I'm trying to figure out how I will pay for a couple dental implants as I will end up exhausting my resources and I don't make enough money to easily save up; but its all temporary and I do have a plan to get a better job, but it's a timing thing and I will need to hold on for a little while longer.

Anyways, point is you should be comfortable with yourself and gradually do things to improve what you don't like and to lead a better life.

I know it's not easy, but I don't think anything worthwhile in life is.

And it sounds like you have some things that are going good, focus on that instead of the negativity; I find that helps a lot.

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Soooooo much good insight posted since my last comment :thumbsup: While some may seem otherwise, everyone really does need the care and support of others. It's a human thing so nobody can escape it :P The only standards you must meet are your own; be realistic in setting them. Nobody can crank out a masterpiece every time round. Even the Mona Lisa is the result of several re-dos. DaVinci was probably not happy with the end results we see today, but he knew that he had to move on to other things- he could not become so focused on making one thing perfect that everything else he wanted to do got neglected :rolleyes: He moved on, knowing that he had done well even if he knew deep inside that he could do better ;) I've seen numerous interviews with very successful writers and they take the same approach. At some point just tell yourself "That's good enough. Now it's time to get my next idea started." 

When I came out as Trans, my oldest friend laughed in my face :crybaby: Of all the people in my life I expected him to be the most understanding one because he had mental health issues which we'd deeply discussed and I made sure he understood that they didn't matter to me- I knew the person inside and that was who I cared about. And I was the only friend who didn't abandon him when his mind started going bonkers on him when we were 14. Even as badly as that laughter hurt me, I knew that there was nothing I could do about it but go on, so I did. A couple years later he came back and apologized and our friendship stayed close from there on till his problems became so severe that they had to institutionalize him :( The renewal may or may not happen with your friend, but all you can do is go on never giving up hope. There is nothing else within your power to do B)

It also helps to understand your own self. While I deeply value my old friends and will always care, I am a "for today" kind of person. I've drifted apart from many of them who no longer appear frequently in my life. I have had to learn to make myself maintain those relationships rather than just let the drifting happen. Time has helped me learn this because time has taken most of my friends away now. I can't afford to let anything on my end jeopardize the few friendships I still have or I will have no friends left at all. Sometimes the effort is in vain but again I can't control that. And I'm always on the lookout for new friends though few appear. It's not what happens that makes the difference, it's more about how you deal with what happens so handle that part well and good will come from it eventually :)

Keep moving forward. Some days will be better than others, some days will seem like you're going backwards. Just remember that you re doing this for you and those you care about, and you're all well worth making that effort for. Even on the dark days when you can't see us, we're still out here cheering you on because we know you're worth it :girl_happy:

Bettypooh

 

 

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