I guess I'm holding myself up to my my mother's. She was a doctor by the age of 24. I wanted to be an actress, and tried to do it for years - never successfully. My anxiety was crippling, and although I got a great agent and went out for some great parts, I could never make it work, and I really didn't enjoy the industry as much as I thought I would. I didn't enjoy it much at all, honestly. I'd dreamed of doing it my entire life, I got into great shape before so I could go out for the parts I wanted, and so to get there and find that it wasn't what I wanted - or could even handle - after dreaming about it and working towards it my entire life - was horrible.

So I went back to school. I was a singer and got a scholarship to study opera at University. I decided to get another degree instead, because my anxiety manifested in performance anxiety that I was medicating myself to try to get a handle on. I don't think I ever did one performance in my 10+ years as a singer that I felt comfortable or happy with.

I graduated with a 4.0 in a useless field, because I was planning to go back for law school, and in my country, you have to do an undergrad first, it doesn't really matter what it is. Then I met my partner and moved countries, and due to my visa, I haven't been able to go back to school. It's been three years now and my visa issues are ongoing, so I'm forced to use my shitty degree. I have a job that I can just barely stand, the pay is fair, but I dreamed of being a lawyer or a professor and it's an awful long way removed from that.

I wrote a book and tried to shop it around, it was rejected by everyone. I'm struggling to finish another.

I just don't know where to go from here. Everything I thought I wanted to do has proved to be nothing like I imagined.

I know how stupid all of this sounds. I just feel like I've failed in every single thing I thought I might be able to do well. I don't know where to go from here. I feel very lost and hopeless about the future.