I was going to abandon this dead thread - and this signed-out pseudonym with it - but by jingo, it's happened again! This very night!

I am seriously peeved about this but also seriously puzzled. As I might have mentioned I have been doing this stuff - at the level where I do this stuff, ie FC floor spots and singarounds - for ten years no less. (When I started doing floor spots one of "my songs" was Between the Wars, because back then it still was.) Since then I've learned at a conservative estimate a hundred songs or so, and given god knows how many performances at the aforesaid FCs and singarounds. In all that time nobody has actually said I ought to charge people money, but equally nobody has ever, ever taken it on themselves to tell me my singing was less than adequate. Until now, when it's happened twice in a month.

W as the kids say TF? Has my singing gone into a sudden decline? Is it (An Optimist Writes) actually a sign that I'm doing well, in that highly accomplished folkies - who do charge people money - think it's worth giving me unsolicited hints & tips? (If so I wish they'd revise their opinion of me downwards and start ignoring me again - these helpful hints are doing my confidence, & hence my performances, no good at all.) Or am I just wearing a Kick Me sign all of a sudden?

Ideas? Better still, PM me, somebody. (I guess it would be easier if I posted under my own name, but I don't feel quite ready to do that.)