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 find that observation really interesting. When I watch old sitcoms from the 70s it appears that the world was much less career driven than it is now, you worked to live rather than live to work, unless you were in some high powered Jerry Ledbetter type job of course. People wanted to enjoy and experience life and work was what enabled that, rather than work being your life and the thing that defined your happiness and self worth. 
Modern society, since the 80s and the whole yuppy, Thatcher revolution, seems so much more career focused, like a successful career, a constant march towards promotions and advancement is what life is about. This has become even worse with Instagram influencers, grind culture and "maxxing". 

Id be really interested to get your perspective on all this 

I don't and have never used social media apart from here and one other small site that's now closed, so I'm afraid I couldn't really comment, I don't even know what 'grind culture or maxxing' are. From what I've been shown of people who call themselves influencers is that they're like the popular kids at school, who are all "look at me, I'm wonderful and if you dont' want to be like me me then then you're worthless, sad and in need of bullying".

How people define self worth has always varied across time and culture and of course class, but if there's one thing the British excel at it's eccentricity, so being interesting different has always had a certain cachet, as long as unappologetic for it, think Quentin Crisp, Oscar Wilde (yes I know he was Irish), Vita Sackville West and many other pioneering weirdo's who are now celebrated and some who are still living as National Treasures.

Other culture's look at British fashion and wonder how we can pair a floaty, flowery summer dress, with a pair of docs and get away with it? But it's what we do!

I don't and have never used social media apart from here and one other small site that's now closed, so I'm afraid I couldn't really comment, I don't even know what 'grind culture or maxxing' are. From what I've been shown of people who call themselves influencers is that they're like the popular kids at school, who are all "look at me, I'm wonderful and if you dont' want to be like me me then then you're worthless, sad and in need of bullying".

How people define self worth has always varied across time and culture and of course class, but if there's one thing the British excel at it's eccentricity, so being interesting different has always had a certain cachet, as long as unappologetic for it, think Quentin Crisp, Oscar Wilde (yes I know he was Irish), Vita Sackville West and many other pioneering weirdo's who are now celebrated and some who are still living as National Treasures.

Other culture's look at British fashion and wonder how we can pair a floaty, flowery summer dress, with a pair of docs and get away with it? But it's what we do!