Very well put.

It took me a loooong time to realize what I was doing and to get out of it.

This year I have gone harder than ever into my hobbies, and I have intentionally done every single bit myself without even consulting the people I usually would have had helping in the past.

The "pros" list covers basically everything from the physical outcomes of the project to the positive effects on me throughout.

The only negative is maybe that it's going slower than it would if I had some judgy relatives around, but that's not much of a negative in reality. Hobbies don't need to have deadlines.

And I dare say that the boost in confidence from the process has bled over into other areas of my personal and professional life. And I don't mean in a Linkedin Lunatics kind of way where I've rediscovered my ambition. Lol no, now I have the confidence to pursue the happiness and fulfillment I want to find in life.

Self confidence is a weird thing.

It's one thing to know and believe that you're intelligent and that you've done more research into the subject than the downers around you. But when you have a lifetime of issues dealing with people thanks to undiagnosed ADHD (insert meme "if you get good grades they let you raw dog ADHD your whole life") then impostor syndrome is just your starting point.

But once you do something significant on your own and see the consistently great results, the confidence shifts from being something you believe "on paper" in your mind to being something you feel in your bones and know to be true in a deeper way.

Or at least that's how it worked for me during this specific period of my life. Relationships are a big deal for our psyches so it may turn out that you need to lean into healthy relationships rather than lean out of mildly toxic ones.