Dear judaft,
Thank you for finding the courage to post about your confusion and distress. Finding the internal strength to write your message is an excellent step toward figuring out some possible ways you might proceed. Hopefully, our helpful and supportive community members will provide some support once they spot your post.
We understand that you found school to be a real struggle throughout your teenage years, so you made the decision to find a different path for yourself. Unfortunately, you are now comparing yourself with teens on the internet who have found their way, become successful, and make it look easy. So, we invite you to consider a couple thoughts.
1) How many teens on the internet are actually really successful, compared with how many teens are around who have access to the internet? We would be surprised if the number is as high as 0.1%, or 1 out of 1000 teens, and we would be very interested to learn the answer.
2) How much work, time, and effort did each of the successful teens on the internet need to put in with practice, failing, making mistakes, and not doing other fun things, in order to become successful on the internet?
What we think you might be asking is, how can you get past all the blaming of yourself so you can start successfully finding your way down your chosen different path? We know that it is easy to blame ourselves. So, we need to teach ourselves to shift our thinking. One way to do this is by asking ourselves the following questions.
1) What do I dream of doing in my life?
2) What do I need to do to be able to do what I dream of doing in my life?
3) Am I willing to do the things I need to do to be able to do the things I dream of doing in my life?
If the answer to question 3 is no, I need to look at a different option for question 1.
We are here for you, and we will help you discuss any options you come up with so you can figure out which direction to go.
Warm regards,
Sophie M