I feel like envy is ruining my life

[Veronica Sawyer]

I feel like I can't escape envy, and it's making me feel like shit so often. It's really negatively impacting my ability to socialize with other people when their success and ability to achieve things makes me feel angry, resentful, and hopeless.

Currently there are two situations where I feel envy and it sets of severe depression for me. The first is with a lot of stuff related to making music. I'm not a professional musician, but playing instruments and making music has been a very important part of my life for a long time. I got really into covers of video game music a while ago, which inspired me to make my own covers around 2017-2019, and then I got really into DIY bedroom rock stuff on bandcamp, which really inspired me to try and write my own music even if it wasn't anything amazing. But I've never been able to find any sort of community in what I do. No matter what, despite trying to engage in communities on social media, on discord servers, sharing stuff with my friends, trying and find other people to play and collaborate with, I've never been successful with any social aspects of music. I just end up doing things by myself and never becoming part of any community, and I just feel ignored.

Slowly these feelings of being ignored and just general depression have turned into resentment and envy. I stopped watching other peoples video game covers around 2018 because it would just make me depressed. Recently I haven't been able to watch live performances of bands that I like for the same reason. Seeing people collaborating with each other, working together to create something, and having a great time together just makes me feel like I"m watching something I'll never be able to have. I went to a music convention earlier this year and it was the worst couple days I've had in a long time, just standing at concerts and feeling like there was no point even trying, like I may as well just kill myself because I'll never be able to feel like I belong in a group of musicians. I still try to push myself to make music on my own just because I enjoy doing it, but without the social aspect it feels really difficult to push myself sometimes, I just feel ignored and inadequate.

The other situation (which sort of overlaps with the first) is just when I'm around more extroverted or motivated people. Like when I hear somebody talking about DMing with a friend, having long conversations discussing their interests and engaging with each others' hobbies, I just feel so resentful because I have this block that keeps me from just reaching out and talking to people without them reaching out to me first. (I've had this mental block for years and tried to get over it through multiple methods and multiple therapists, nothing I've tried seems to work) Or I have a friend who is way more motivated than me, pushing themself to learn new skills like drawing, consistently livestreaming and actually succeeding in buliding a community of friends, and I feel like I'm just languishing in my own isolation that I can't seem to escape. I can't stand to be around people a lot of the time because I feel like being angry and resentful over others' success and positive qualities is just so antithetical to being a good friend. I feel like I have to completely disengage myself or risk being an asshole to other people.

It's not like I haven't tried to achieve the things I'm envious of: in fact I think these two examples are the things I'm so intensely envious of precisely because I have tried to achieve them and feel like I have failed, so I feel hopeless.

So yeah, this is a long post, but it's something that has just been dragging me down for years and I don't know what to do about it anymore. I still try sometimes to find new communities and still push to engage with other musicians, but with every time I get knocked down it just gets harder and harder to get back up. Any sympathy or advice would be appreciated.

 

[SoftWorries]

Have you considered playing on the street if you're talented?

 

[Hollowman]

I can relate a lot but sadly I don't have any advice.

 

[itsallpointless]

Sounds like you have alot of fixation on one facet of life. In my experience taking a break from the need for excellence has ironically always improved my performance. Chill out, distance yourself from ambition and maybe take a different slice of life for a while?

 

[Veronica Sawyer]

Sounds like you have alot of fixation on one facet of life. In my experience taking a break from the need for excellence has ironically always improved my performance. Chill out, distance yourself from ambition and maybe take a different slice of life for a while?

I've definitely considered trying to take a break from social ambitions, ranging from taking a full-on break from most social interactions in my life to just scaling things back a bit. Try and become a little more okay with being by myself. I think there are times when I'm pretty good at this, I really love just walking around outside alone, and I think I'm often more inclined to just sit with myself than to be around others. Maybe just trying to focus on building a way of living where I'm okay being mostly on my own would be a good thing, I've definitely given it serious consideration.

On the other hand though, I do genuinely enjoy social interaction when it is presented to me, and though I am very inclined to remain by myself, I worry that this inclination prevents me from enjoying more connections than I am getting right now, in a sort of social fear of missing out kinda way. It's like how my depression makes me less interested in my hobbies - I know I enjoy certain activities, but my depression makes me just have barely any motivation to do anything, so I've learned to distrust this desire to not do anything, to not talk with people, since it tends to be pretty harmful to my quality of life. I worry scaling back my social engagements might be detrimental to me, not to mention all of the anxiety that comes up when I think about becoming less and less a part of the lives of those that I care a lot about. I don't want people to feel like I'm abandoning them.

I feel like in order for this sort of thing to work I would need to free myself from these desires, stop desiring what I don't have and just allow my social life to exist as it is. While that sounds great in theory it just feels really difficult, and a big part of me doesn't want to give up that desire, partly because I feel like what I want isn't unrealistic. And that's probably why the envy feels so strong too - it doesn't feel like that much just to want social relationships that feel satisfying and people to share my hobbies with. But I feel unable to create satisfying relationships, due to depression making me unmotivated to do much of anything, and social anxiety keeping me from talking with people openly. And so I feel envy. Maybe if I just stopped desiring these social connections I wouldn't feel the envy, but it feels impossible. Maybe if I managed to actually fix my depression that leaves me unmotivated and uninterested in much of anything, or fix my social anxiety that leaves me afraid to be open and honest with even my closest friends, then I wouldn't feel the envy. But years of trying to fix these things has not gotten me much of anywhere.

I'm not sure how much of this makes sense, but it did at least give me the opportunity to sit for a while and think about all of the thoughts and feelings that got brought up while writing, which I think has been beneficial to some degree. I appreciate your comment and advice.

Also, sorry if I sound like super robotic and analytical, sometimes I have a hard time addressing my issues with any sort of emotion, which is kind of weird because other times when I write stuff it's super emotional (like when I wrote the original post here lol)

 

[Mirrory Me]

Have you recorded or published any material? I believe that someone would think the same way and be ready to collabrate with you.