Okay, what do you want me to say this time?

I’ve done four of these, and I know that there are certain things I am expected to say. I’m supposed to talk about things I could improve, and things I’m doing well at. I’m supposed to tell you my goals and how I am going to go about achieving them. I can’t do that again because it wouldn’t be real, but I can’t defend myself because I know I can be better. I know that I technically could do better. That’s something that goes for everything.

The difference is that part of me can’t do any better. I don’t know how to describe it, but I can try really hard and still fail really badly and a lot of the time it seems like I’m the only person that happens to. Everybody I know seems to have so much talent and intelligence that they always just know what to do to succeed and I’m just not there. Which sucks.
If I’m being honest, I feel like I’m the only person I know who can try my hardest and still fail. Statistically, I know that’s obviously stupid and cannot be true, but to me, it seems like when anyone else tries really hard, they always do well. That doesn’t always happen for me. Sometimes it feels like the only solution to this is to

This song actually really represents my feelings a lot of the time, especially the line “it’s not really failure if you’re not even trying”, because although a lot of the stuff I do is like, fine, that’s all it ever seems to be. It’s especially discouraging when I try really hard on something and it still doesn’t show. It’s discouraging when all I can say about my work is that I handed in it.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m defending myself, because I’m really not. I think that if I slept less and stayed home more that I might start making stuff that was better, but I’m worried that if I did that I would sacrifice my happiness because I need sleep. I think I tend to get sick when I don’t get as much of it. Except I don’t know what to do at this point because all of a sudden my grades matter and I know that they’re not good enough, and all of a sudden I have to care about my grades. I’ve always said that grades won’t define my life but all of a sudden it feels like they will, which I think is stupid. I think they shouldn’t. And the fact that I have to stress myself out over these numbers and then pay people to learn the things I’m actually interested in makes me equally angry and terrified.

So I’m at a crossroad here. I would sell my soul if I was able to get good grades and still take regular naps, but I don’t think that’s possible anymore. Which sucks, but I think that I can do it. I worked at a place that caused me emotional stress for two years because I cared about being a good employee and I needed to prove to myself I could do it. If I could do that, I can do this.

I can do this. So I’ll set some goals. Whatever. There are some goals I have that I think will actually improve my work a lot without being weird and deep personal goals.

I want to get better at video editing. I’ve found that this is something that is holding me back by an insane amount. I can put my heart and soul into something and still not have it look as good as some people in this class spending half an hour on stuff. I also always manage to somehow screw up my video projects in multiple ways simply because I don’t have the technical skills. I know that it kind of looks like I’m not trying very hard on these things because they really do look half-assed, but it’s really just that I am lacking the skills needed to make them look good. It’s a huge knowledge gap for me that I’ve realized isn’t going to come naturally. Because I know that it will actually help, a lot, it’s something that I am willing to commit more time to.

I want to have better ideas, and be more creative. It seems to me like part of the reason that my work is never very great is that it’s not interesting or funny and it doesn’t always have personality. Of course, I find this hard to do because I don’t find all of the same stuff funny as a lot of my classmates. I have a lot of different opinions on what’s good and what’s not, but since everybody else’s seems to always work better, maybe I should stop trusting my instincts.

I hope that wasn’t too depressing. Soz.