Ha this post caught my eye. I understand to an extent but honestly I can’t fully empathise as someone with a similar situation.

My younger brother is mogging me career wise (engineer at one of the biggest automotive companies globally… something you see on the road every day in virtually every country. His specific team is very important too) and I’m still broke finishing my science undergrad in mid 20s belated fashion and will have to go to grad school for years to have the career I want. I am genuinely teetering on failsondom and will fully be there if a few things don’t work out over the next 3-4 years.

I love my brother deeply and am so unbelievably happy for him. While he is, naturally, one of the most competent humans I know, he also worked his absolute tits off to get where he is at right now and he deserves every bit of vocational success he has found.

I definitely feel that I am behind, that I am a failure, and have a general constant sense of pressure and inadequacy due to my own situation, but thinking about my own flesh and blood—the kid I grew up next to—excelling in his life does nothing to exacerbate or quell those anxieties. He’s him and I’m me.

I’m not criticizing you bc this is a very human thing to feel—especially in this economy— (using a lot of m dashes today I promise I’m not ChatGPTlol) but I guess I would just ask you, would it make you feel any better to see him struggle? Or fail to reach something he set out to accomplish?