I, like the others above me also registered on the site to send my reply. A powerful post to make so many people around the world sign up just to reply. As a 37 year old man that is still trying to break away from his families grasp to try and find where I want to ‘start’ my life, I also deal with a lot of the same issues.

In depressed times for myself as well as friends and family I notice that people focus on the bad things in their life instead of on the good – which to a point is good as we need to find a way out of the mess we have possibly put ourselves in – but thinking only about the negative puts us into these extremely depressed states of mind which are hard to come out of. What I try to focus on is my personal strengths and the fact that I’ve gotten out of some sticky situations in the past to try and remain confident that things will come around and I will ‘catch a break’ sometime. (which I believe improves almost any situation on its own) The key is to just keep yourself in a mood where you will be ready to catch that break it when it comes.

Even in your post written at a bad point in your life, it is easy for someone away from the situation to see that you still have a lot of things going for you. Just keep your head up, remind yourself of positive things you’ve gotten through in the past and be ready to make the jump once that next opportunity comes along and instead of trying to compare yourself to others, remind yourself that everyone goes through life at different times, it doesn’t mean the end result will be any worse than any one else’s. Besides, aren’t you artists supposed to have tortured lives? 😉

EDIT: One other thing I wanted to touch on is that there are different ways of judging success in this life. I’ve been on both sides of the coin and there are always troubles whether it being financially or otherwise, but I believe North America puts too much emphasis on finances to deem if someone is successful. I have a university prof brother who makes 6 figures, has the wife and kids and a PhD, but has spent his whole life studying and working and unable to spend more time with his kids. There was another article on this site that touched on this http://tinybuddha.com/blog/where-true-happiness-comes-from-how-we-gain-by-having-less/ . Basically, just because your money is tight and career goals are not where you’d like them to be, don’t let that make you think your whole life is a wash.