New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Discovering that I am mediocre

Ask HN: Discovering that I am mediocre
6 by throwaway_2823 | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I'm 35 years old and tired of feeling like I'm "white knuckling" my way through life. Math, programming, engineering, etc... has never been easy for me and I've always had to work exceptionally hard to even be on par with others, it's only my innate interest in these subjects and refusal to give up as to why I'm working as a software engineer now. Despite all this work I still am just very mediocre, and I've reached the point where I'm so exhausted from trying so hard for so long that I'm ready to accept that. I've always had a really hard time with equating my value in life directly to whatever it is that I "do", so essentially ever since I was 12 this has been tied to school performance and then work. I don't want to continue down this path of working so hard just to be ok at whatever it is I do at the expense of personal relationships, enjoying the moment, etc... I'm so brainwashed from living my life like this for so long that I don't know what else there is though. What else am I supposed to do? How can I derive value from just normal things in life again? The thought of not striving to be exceptional at everything I do leaves me with such a feeling of emptiness that I'm not sure how to fill. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

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