Why Are You Failing to Make a Success of Yourself?

It shouldn’t be this easy to fail to make a success of yourself.

University, school and good parenting tell you all of the amazing things to you’re going to do and be when you “grow up”. I’m not suggesting for a moment that they’ve done this to be intentionally cruel, so that when you come round from your stupor of optimism at twenty-five and find you’re still working in Game, renting an overpriced, more than you can afford, grotty hole in Romford with a flat mate you’ve grown to despise, it hits you full in the face just how far short of everyone’s expectations you have actually come, including your own. No, I expect they were just as deluded then, as you have come to be, as to the state of how things always promised to be in the future.

            It was all supposed to play like a computer game wasn’t it. Level 1 gain some simple qualifications, you pass, level 2, gain some slightly harder ones, then you enter a new stage, university, you rent your first apartment, a filthy hole, but your safe in the knowledge that when you next level up, your accommodation should follow suit. It’s called progress. Level 4,  a new job, earn some experience points, some XP, then try for a better one, next level, better experience, an even better job follows, and the principle is, or at least you thought so, that your lifestyle enters along the path of progression at a rate simultaneous to your progress through the game. It works that way for a while, you gain the necessary qualifications, you walk out with the degree, you meander smugly into an agency and even get your first job, the crap one, the one that  builds your first primitive “skills” that will take you confidently up into the next level. This is when  it all goes wrong. This is when you hit Act III of the labyrinth zone and Dr Robotnik, laughing spitefully in your face throughout, climbs higher and higher into the realms of unattainability while the waters of time rise from below threatening to drown you in the horrors of your early thirties, meanwhile, you, an unfulfilled blue hedgehog are faced with the seemingly endless task of catch up, dodging life’s spikes and pitfalls, failing to be content with the odd golden ring that comes your way; even these turn out to be gold plated.