I don't disagree with you that it would (naturally) vary from person to person, but I'm a bit tired of hearing this "boot straps" go-to whenever anyone suggests that making an effort or putting themselves out there resulted in some kind of success and might work for others. It's just not. It's life. If you try, sometimes things happen. If you don't try, nothing happens. No one expects success all of the time. I wouldn't call that year off of mine any kind of 'success' at all. It was the constant failure that benefited me in the end. I wasn't social to start. I didn't have some great work ethic right off the bat, and I took that year off not just because of money fears but because I'd stopped going to class. I barely cleared that last semester before I left because all I did was sleep. I wasn't 'fine'. But don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating for anything other than trying. I understand that there are degrees of things and life doesn't just unlock proportionate to the effort you put in. I just think the failures are as valuable as the successes, and boy do you get a lot of fail if you strike out on your own early. :P
Oh sure, I'm not saying not to try. What I'm saying is what works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for another for a variety of reasons and that people grow at different rates, so the absolutist view of needing to "put yourself out there" can sometimes be premature. In those scenarios, I'd rather not judge people for still living with their parents well into adulthood, whether because they're still figuring things out, need time to recuperate from something, or are just unfortunately incapable of making it out in the real world.
The reason I say "bootstraps" is because it assumes being out there is always going to be something beneficial, whether it be for growth or just figuring things out in life, when that's far from the truth. I have no doubt in my mind that my old friend who is now in a psyche ward would be a much happier and stable person if he still lived with his parents. That potential for a happy life is gone now.
I'd say that's why I empathize with people like Vadara and others in similar situations. Not only because of my friend, but it similarly hits close to home for me and all the failures I've experienced to the point I often wish I never tried at all. The way I see it, the only difference between me and them is I'm privileged enough to have zero financial woes thanks to the efforts of others and not me actually earning that lifestyle.
Anyway, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. You put yourself out there all the time with your work, and you sound like you'd make a fine father because you care. That's the important part, really.
You're overestimating me. Outside of a barebones visual novel that took me longer to make than it should have, I haven't put out anything in a few years now. I'll always love the idea of creating and my ever growing word doc of concepts will always get new pages, but the actual process has stopped being fun after multiple failures. I won't say I've given up altogether, but more days than not, my thought process will pretty much be "I'm okay with being a leech and my goal in life being to consume the content I want". A truly driven person would never get to that point.
As for being a good father, I can't imagine that at all. These last few years, I've kind of had to confront just how self-centered of a person I really am and caring for a child is way outside the scope of that, at least the current me.
