SO MUCH TALENT

Contests are designed specifically to accommodate one winner--and even then the winning position may soon prove not be particularly worth coveting. Every presented platform/pedestal elevates, but the position is not always safe, genuine or honorable. Not everyone is admiring, applauding, encouraging or mentoring. Some are ridiculing, using, exploiting, and damaging. Be careful about what you allow yourself to be sucked into. Be careful where you allow others to put you, and whose words you embrace as expert or truth. Many people have given up doing what they love because of the discouraging, unsubstantiated or critical words of a single person who had as about as much right , authority, experience or talent to judge the work of others as a dead squirrel did.
Be more careful about where you put yourself, and what your motives are for being there.
Schemes borne out of desperate ambition or impatient desire for perceived success, have a tendency to backfire. They can also bring one back to reality. Platforms designed to profit everyone except the individual perched upon them are fragile, temporary, and potentially paralyzing and heartbreaking.
Starting over, developing patience, improving one's ability, being true to oneself, and trusting God are all very good things. Whose approval you believe you can't do without will greatly affect how, where, and when you perform. Just because the route is there doesn't mean it's the only one you can take to get where you want to go--no matter how quickly you perceive the clock to be ticking. If you DO take the road, getting misleading directions along the way doesn't mean you have to cancel the whole trip.