I'm in my room at night with nothing but the dim glow of the screen in sight. Nothing but white. I try to fill the void, but I just get annoyed. I hear one voice, two people. One says quit now, I ain't regal.

Okay, enough with the rhymes.

Let me start with what I think is the reason for why I doubt myself so much. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. I was a recluse who wanted to copy my favorite video game character in Portal who

never speaks.

I remember someone calling me a zombie because of how quiet I was. I only spoke when I really had to, like when the teacher asks me to solve a problem. I did this for around two years. My social life was gone by then and it's affected my social skills ever since. In fact, I still don't quite know how to make friends. I was lucky enough to make a few close ones, at least.

I thought of some weird ways to make friends. I watched a lot of Youtube videos when it was still rather new and thought it was the coolest thing ever to be making videos. I was into watching Minecraft videos and VFX shorts by the channel freddiew (currently RocketJump) so I naturally looked into how to make them. I booted up a not-so-legal copy of Sony Vegas and churned out cringey Minecraft let's plays that bored a whole party who wanted to see my videos. I watched a lot of VFX tutorials but didn't have the equipment to record anything.

Suffice to say, I still didn't make any friends. I told myself that I wasn't good enough for people to like me yet.

This thinking led me to start learning other things such as programming, 3D animation, filmmaking, and more. The closest thing this brought me to making friends was people wanting to group up with me whenever we had a video project so I could do all the work.

I felt awful

I didn't think I was good enough at anything. All of the fun about making things was sapped out of me. I just wanted to keep improving and focused on nothing else. There was a voice in my head that kept telling me that I would never improve and that I should just give up already. This made me lose my motivation. I never finished making anything and ended up with half-baked projects. People told me that I'm good at what I do, but there's always an overbearing voice that just keeps saying I'm terrible, and that I can't make anything good.

And then I made a friend

She was incredibly kind to me and was always honest with what she said. She was never afraid to say that what I was doing was bad. Her honesty gave more weight to the moments she praised me. I felt safe to say what I felt, about how I always look down on myself. Now she's always there to support me and to help guide me to the right path.

Don't get me wrong, the terrible voice is still there telling me awful things. It's never went away, but something else grew in me. There was a third voice. It's nurturing, kind, and always tells me to persevere. All I have to do is listen to the right one.

Let someone you trust know how you feel. Ask for their support. It would go a long way into helping you achieve your goals.

Thank you for reading.