Aibu to feel I'm just painfully average?

[DavidBeckhamsleftfoot]

Just that really.

I'm never going to be the one with the important well earning job. I'm never going to be the funniest or the cleverest. As I get older I realise that really there is no hope for success for myself and I should focus my attention on my DC so I can give them the springboard to help achieve whatever they wish in their own lives. Probably not explained it very well here, but I just feel like I'm not here for anything!

OP. It's great that you know your characters. Don't overthink where they are going. How about making a shortlist of 5 possibilities for them, then just pick one (i.e. the one that gives you most excitement) and just go for it! There's no right or wrong story and having strong characters and a rich narrative will make it. And as the characters grow on paper you may well find that they start to write their own story anyway!
Go for it... and enjoy!

I feel exactly the same OP. I'm mediocre at best and a failure at worst. My chosen field of work is highly competitive and there are people out there 20 years younger than me doing so much better than I am. Sometimes I think I'm just kidding myself and am destined to achieve nothing in my life.

I feel exactly like you Op. However I realise I am lucky to be here, to have family and friends and a job. I suppose it's because potential hasn't been reached but having overcome a lot of barriers from early childhood, it was always going to be harder for me. Nothing much was expected of me but even as a child I set my own goals. As an adult I have reached all the milestones but think
there should be more too.

I am quite happy to be average. Aren't most of us?

I feel a bit like you Op. I'm 32 so also have time to change things but not sure how.
I have a profession but I've stagnated in it after dc.
I'm a stone overweight and lack motivation to address it.
I live in an area where lots of people would like to be but don't like it. I would like to move but need more money.
I don't have many local friends so social life sucks a bit.
I don't have the money or time to retrain In a career I would love.

On the positive side:
I have 2 beautiful healthy dc who are flourishing
I have a faithful and loving Dh
I own a home
I have some nice friends from school and uni who I catch up with regularly.
There are some aspects of my job which I enjoy.

There are plus sides to being average but I understand where you're
Coming from.

I feel like you as well, OP. Although I am almost ten years older - at under 30 you are so young, and still have so much time to achieve something if that is what you want to do.

I think there must be lots of us who feel like this. As a previous poster said, many of us were told at school or by our parents that we were unique and special, and could be anything we wanted to be.

I always did well at school, then reached university and realised I wasn’t that special after all. I was a bit clueless about careers and applied to all sorts of random jobs since I needed to work to pay off my student debts. I ended up in a field that I wasn’t particularly well suited to, and have been mediocre ever since.

People I started out with are now partners and board directors, or running departments (which, to be fair, I wouldn’t want to do) while I’m muddling along at a middling sort of level.

Perhaps I am still under the influence of all that positive messaging from school, since there’s a part of me that feels I could be good at something, if only I could discover what that was. But perhaps my efforts would be better directed towards learning to be happy with being average.

It's this driven society making us feel we have to be driven, (constantly) goal-focused achievers, competitive, ooze confidence, look like this sound like that, have our 15 minutes of fame screaming from the rooftops about any old crap, or we don't matter. Everyone has something special about them. Or at least something they'd like to do, that would make them feel special. Do that

You’re spot on there, Mistress!

But it’s all about making the most of your life too and feeling that we all matter. It’s not a bad message.

Get yourself some matching red underwear, knowing I am rocking scarlet undercrackers, under chain store black basics puts a smile on my face.

Just to add another perspective - the odds of you being born were 1:400,000,000,000. You are amazing and you have life changing ideas for a reason (and it's not to torture yourself)

Only one person in a room is average. Unless there’s an equal number but then there’s only two of you. Average isn’t common :)

The advice is usually to write about what you know, so see if the story in your head can be adapted to a setting you’re familiar with.
You could even write about a bored, disillusioned woman who thinks she’s Ms Average and that her life is as dull as dishwater. Then she wins the lottery/discovers she’s the illegitimate daughter of a prince/witnesses a crime and has to go into the witness protection programme/discovers she’s having quads/falls into a parallel universe - or whatever. The possibilities are endless.
There’s a creative writing section within Books.

Ive got a goodish job but it's not high powered or anything but the thing I realised a long while ago is that very few of us make a mark on the world in the long term. Maybe in a couple of thousand of years even the Shakespeare's and Da Vinci's of the world will be forgotten.

My motto is to enjoy life as it is now, taking pleasure in my family and children, travelling and seeing the beauty in this world, setting myself new challenges which whilst on the outside may be small they are my achievements to be proud of, that's the essence of life to me

I absolutely love writing and when I was 24 decided to write a story that I thought was a bit different from
the usual love story.

So I wrote and wrote. It took me seven months and I showed it to my friend (journalist for one of the broadsheets) and she agreed it made for a really good read.

I then got too scared to send it cause I was worried about rejection. When I finally sent it (I think I sent it to Random House from memory), I got a rejection letter which knocked me.

Three years later I bought a novel from the airport and the storyline was almost identical (different setting and character names) but otherwise almost the same...

I felt like this author’s writing was a lot better, although more simple (not a criticism, she got published and I didn’t )
I can’t remember the name of the book now, but the premise is a woman in her thirties who has been with bf for five or so years and he has died. His parents are devastated and see a connection in her to their dead child and rightly or wrongly look to her for emotional support.

However, she is unable to admit that on the day he died she was going to break up with him because she had fallen out of love and then feels she has to continue with the charade for fear of not upsetting his parents/ friends, etc...

It probably sounds a bit bland written like that, but I had tried to write it to show how much pressure and guilt the protagonist had and how she was unable and actually felt guilty to move on with her life because her bf’s parents continued to live in the past etc... it was also written in a way that explored the way that people make heroes out of the deceased even if they weren’t necessarily that when alive...

Anyway, that’s enough waffling.

It’s taken ten years, but in July I started writing again. Something completely different this time and is fiction based on a subject which interests me greatly - criminology.

Stephen King said “to be a writer, all you have to do, is simply write...”
(Being a published and paid author of course, that’s a different subject entirely...)

How I started was to buy a beautiful
lined notebook and a lovely pen and would write ideas as and when they came to me- these branch off so quickly and before you know it you have many characters and scenarios.

I have a notebook on my desk at work too, because once you get into the flow of everything, random ideas oftentimes “sprout” ...

I hope you find the courage to follow your aspirations. Good luck with everything.

Thank you everyone for posting.

Sorry I haven't come back. Had a really hard day. I could not get everything more wrong if I tried.

When will it ever get better?

Hope today has been a better day for you, Becks

OP, get Stephen King's book On Writing out of the library. It is a very good memoir and gives really good advice about writing for the average person. Hope things get better for you.

I'm so sorry, but it's getting worse.

The weight of my failure is so heavy I can hardly breathe.

I truly have no use except to make things worse for people. I'm not adding one good thing to my children's lives. I can't even bring myself to cuddle them.

Now I'm worried - that sounds like depression talking, and it's very hard to see things rationally when you're ill. I don't know how old your baby is but is there a possibility you have PND? Do you have people you can talk to IRL about this?

I do think that the vast majority of us live ordinary unexceptional lives and put ourselves under unnecessary pressure by comparing ourselves with the exceptional.

This sounds more than feeling like you should be achieving more.
Please make an appointment with your gp and tell them how you’re feeling.

Your children love you and need you. You’re everything to them and they don’t need you to be someone else’s ideal of exceptional.
You already are exceptional.

The vast majority of people are average. Average education, average looks, average earnings, average jobs.

I quite like being average. Doesn't bother me in the slightest

I can't even cuddle them.

You are more amazing than you think. The fact you said you should focus on your DC to give them a springboard in life tells me what a great mum you are. That alone is a success and far more important than being funny and a high earner.