Is it my fault?

You are being hard on yourself, BUT, there are huge expectations placed on us that we are born knowing what we want to be when we grow up and slowly work towards it and have a career, house, get married, have kids and all the other stuff advertisers sell as a dream. It is a dream, many people sort of fall into doing a job or having a career and don't really think about it.

I'm 64 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. When I was a young woman we had jobs, if anyone had asked us what career we wanted, we would have looked at them like their heads did up at the back! You just had a job and if you didn't like you got a different one, or worked as a temp, via an agency, you didn't often find what you did want to do, but you found out what you never wanted to do again.

Have you asked yourself where all this judgement comes from because if you can answer that you may be able to be less hard on yourself and give yourself some breathing space?

I don’t know exactly where it comes from. I’ve been taken to many different activities when I was younger, and as I got to about 17/18, I started to think that I need to be exceptional in these things. That also included a lot of social media comparison. Obviously from school to uni, the world gets bigger, then from uni to the real world, the world gets bigger, and I believed I could get bigger with it (taking literally that you can do anything if you put your mind to it). In all of that, I’ve felt this pressure to have a story to tell, and so I’m looking to try and have an interesting story to tell.

i told myself I wouldn’t be a teacher until I’ve lived and travelled and then have the experience grounded to really take into a classroom. Then, when I was asked to teach at my music service, I just agreed in saying yes because I also believed I needed to be busy to be directional. There’s a lot of misunderstandings in all of that.

its left me bitter towards my uni experience, especially since being a student during COVID, and I didn’t used to be so like that. I think I’m scared of being how I currently feel, a wanderer trying to plant ground and missing the soil every time i try to break ground. I’m scared of being asked “what are you doing with your life”, and saying “I really don’t know, I don’t quite feel connected with anything”, it feels humiliating.

i think you’re right, it’s a lot of pressure as children, and it feels that if you don’t hit the mark in the most critical period of development, childhood and adolescence, you’re stuck floating forever. Maybe not a true perspective, but I do find myself often dissociating from this reality to a reality where I’m younger, and not autistic, grabbing at every opportunity and living life.

I don’t know exactly where it comes from. I’ve been taken to many different activities when I was younger, and as I got to about 17/18, I started to think that I need to be exceptional in these things. That also included a lot of social media comparison. Obviously from school to uni, the world gets bigger, then from uni to the real world, the world gets bigger, and I believed I could get bigger with it (taking literally that you can do anything if you put your mind to it). In all of that, I’ve felt this pressure to have a story to tell, and so I’m looking to try and have an interesting story to tell.

i told myself I wouldn’t be a teacher until I’ve lived and travelled and then have the experience grounded to really take into a classroom. Then, when I was asked to teach at my music service, I just agreed in saying yes because I also believed I needed to be busy to be directional. There’s a lot of misunderstandings in all of that.

its left me bitter towards my uni experience, especially since being a student during COVID, and I didn’t used to be so like that. I think I’m scared of being how I currently feel, a wanderer trying to plant ground and missing the soil every time i try to break ground. I’m scared of being asked “what are you doing with your life”, and saying “I really don’t know, I don’t quite feel connected with anything”, it feels humiliating.

i think you’re right, it’s a lot of pressure as children, and it feels that if you don’t hit the mark in the most critical period of development, childhood and adolescence, you’re stuck floating forever. Maybe not a true perspective, but I do find myself often dissociating from this reality to a reality where I’m younger, and not autistic, grabbing at every opportunity and living life.