In most hobbies, you are simply challenging yourself. Want to learn to play guitar? You have a set goal and you work towards it. Other people learning to play guitar independently of you have no impact on your ability to progress. Want to run a marathon? Another person doing this, doing it faster, etc, doesn't make it any more difficult for you to do it or make you any worse.
This is in contrast to say competing at a world level in a particular sport. In this case, other people's abilities do in fact have a direct impact on your ability to compete at that sport at that level. The more people involved, the higher the chance there is that someone is better than you. When you add a strong incentive (fame, money, etc), this draws even more competition. So true in the financial markets.
As far as your typical jobs. Lets say someone is good at job X. Chances are it is quite difficult to measure their direct impact to a company. In fact, in many cases, your ability to perform at a particular career is in part influenced by your coworkers, the support provided by the organization, and so forth. What I'm getting at is, a lot of people don't necessarily have to be particular great at their job for their companies to survive because the success of the company is contingent upon many people performing different roles. When you have many people performing different roles, it's all kind of vague as to what contribution any individual truly has. Sure some contribute more or less, but the same kind of distribution happens at the competitors of that company.
When it comes to an individual trader, it's all on you. Your ability to compete is directly measurable. Your contribution to the success of your work is directly measured and there's no one who can pick up the slack. It's all you.
Granted there's always a bit of luck involved with anything. Some people are able to get access to capital to start trading at different times. Some people have different abilities in terms of time (for example, maybe someone would be a very good day trader, but due to other commitments is not available to trade during market hours, so they try swing trading and they just aren't good at it, but they'll never know that they would be a great day trader because the opportunity isn't available to them).
You specifically mentioned that you've been attempting technical analysis since 1994, but perhaps you would have been an amazing fundamental analyst or quant and instead you didn't pursue what is optimal for you. On the other hand, maybe 1 more year and it will just all come together for you.
Best wishes in finding your path.
GO FIGURE
