Always feeling like second best...
It's frustrating at times, feeling like you're second best. To quote Daniel Plainview "I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people." I may not hate everyone most of the time, and I can't say I have any particular desire to see others fail, but I've always felt so competitive, like anything I do doesn't matter unless I'm the best there is at it.
A lot of things in my life have been like that, and to be honest, it's what has kept me working at many things when any sane human being would have called it a day long before. In some areas it has worked very well indeed, photography and first person shooters being two of them.
But there's only so much time in a person's life, and being a singular entity, you can only do one thing at a time, and usually have to focus on it to the exclusion of other things to excel in the field.
I know all of this on an intellectual level, but in real life, I often turn away from things because of the depressing feeling that if I did it, I wouldn't be better than anyone else in the world at it, or at least be a serious contender for the spot.
Which is stupid, frankly.
I like cooking, for instance. I'm pretty good at it, but I really don't bother with it any more because my wife has more talent at it. It's like being the city tennis pro, but living with a Wimbledon champion tennis player. You just take one look at them playing tennis and realize that you'd never be as good as that without putting everything else in your life on hold, and possibly not even then. And then you hang up your tennis racquet and let it gather dust for the rest of your days.
And that's just stupid. Cooking isn't a zero-sum game where anything less than the best in the field is worthless. Nor are most things in life. But this incredible competitive urge in me says "If you can't crush everyone else at it, beat them by a mile without breathing hard, then fuck it." And that leads to not bothering with a lot of things to the point of one's life being less for it.
It's stupid and I know it's stupid, but I can't seem to overcome it...
A lot of things in my life have been like that, and to be honest, it's what has kept me working at many things when any sane human being would have called it a day long before. In some areas it has worked very well indeed, photography and first person shooters being two of them.
But there's only so much time in a person's life, and being a singular entity, you can only do one thing at a time, and usually have to focus on it to the exclusion of other things to excel in the field.
I know all of this on an intellectual level, but in real life, I often turn away from things because of the depressing feeling that if I did it, I wouldn't be better than anyone else in the world at it, or at least be a serious contender for the spot.
Which is stupid, frankly.
I like cooking, for instance. I'm pretty good at it, but I really don't bother with it any more because my wife has more talent at it. It's like being the city tennis pro, but living with a Wimbledon champion tennis player. You just take one look at them playing tennis and realize that you'd never be as good as that without putting everything else in your life on hold, and possibly not even then. And then you hang up your tennis racquet and let it gather dust for the rest of your days.
And that's just stupid. Cooking isn't a zero-sum game where anything less than the best in the field is worthless. Nor are most things in life. But this incredible competitive urge in me says "If you can't crush everyone else at it, beat them by a mile without breathing hard, then fuck it." And that leads to not bothering with a lot of things to the point of one's life being less for it.
It's stupid and I know it's stupid, but I can't seem to overcome it...