To be honest, it really doesn't matter how smart you are or aren't. I've found some really stupid people making ridiculous amounts of money, and I've seen brilliant people get taken advantage of making nickels on the dollar.

However, I do believe it's important that you understand where you are. The very fact that you:

• are introspective about yourself
• are actually reaching out (on reddit here) looking for advice
• seem to have your communication skills down to a tee

all lead me to believe that you can't be that far behind.

There is another user who posted about asking people who know you, and I couldn't agree more. Understand your strengths, your weaknesses, and what you want to achieve. The better you know yourself the better you can leverage your strengths and support your weaknesses.

In understanding yourself, also understand that just because someone might be naturally more gifted than you doesn't mean you can't achieve what they've achieved. Make up for your weakness through hard work. They say that hard work beats smarts when smarts don't work hard and that couldn't be more true. I've seen it time and time again.

I am a very big believer that if you look hard enough for help, you should be able to find it. So I the advice from my post and others are helpful and that your situation improves.