I'm pretty sure that the world's greatest achievements and works were usually created by people who had faith in themselves...(cough ben franklin, newton, sophocles, cough practically every greek philosopher).
A huge part of the phenomenon you pick apart deals with being in the right place at the right time. Let's face it: life is simply a crap shoot in many ways. Bill Gates was brilliant to be sure but you realize that he essentially "stole" the idea of a "windows graphical user interface" from jobs who bought the technology off of xerox for literally nothing (xerox made one of the most significant business blunders of the entire century with this inept maneuver, and have likely felt incredibly dumb ever since not realizing the gold mine they were sitting on...).
So, really, I'm not sure I share your sentiment. While I'm certainly not terribly overjoyed with my own prowess...I'm not self-abasing about it either. I can look at all the music I see (both professionally done and otherwise) on my very decent monitoring system and make very logical deductions concerning the things I am doing right and the things I still need to work on and also the things the artist I am comparing may not excel in as much as I do and the things that they obviously do much better. To see it any other way then a simple procedure of comparisons and refocusing of energy to specific weakness' is not only self-defeating (the purpose of creating music is to get better at doing so... no?) but makes it difficult to mark any progress at all that might actually be happening because you are too busy feeling sorry for yourself.
The problem here, Nick (hope you don't mind) is that, as good as you are (and let's not forget that both you and I are aware that you are very good and it is probably sometimes very hard to not be conceited about it...) you probably don't see any sense currently in actually recognizing you are good. You probably still want to compare yourself to the "masters" and say "look! people worship these guys and have for centuries! there is simply no way I can ever approach that level of expertise! it's impossible! i must completely suck or something...! <sigh>"
The fact is this really gets you nowhere. You might as well wear a scarlet "A" or flail yourself in public because musically - that is the equivalent. Honestly - some of the best classical numbers I've ever heard were the ones that never EVER get any airtime because they are (and always were) too experimental. I mean - honestly - canon in c? What a joke. A lot of classical music was just like it is now - POPULAR MUSIC. Meaning it was totally predictable and calculated to be "enjoyed" be the masses. I hate most popular music. There are very very few bands I would ever consider holding on a pedestal. Same thing with classical music. In fact - most composers from any period really just sucked. Even a lot of mozart and schumann and shubert and chopin and blah and blah are simply dead boring to listen to. Yes - they are still very refined numbers and the artists obviously exhibit a great grasp of theory and the like, but there are really very few masterpieces of any age.
So no. I don't suck. And neither does anyone who choosesto not have to "suck". Anyone can become trained to be a world-class mixing engineer/pianist/vocalist/songwriter/pro ducer/guitar shedder/whatever with enough training and resolve. I wouldn't be able to play piano like I do today if it were not for the fact that I practice things like scales, arpeggios, my own composition, general improv and standard pieces EVERY SINGLE DAY. It would simply not be a reality. I've had people (who in cases had played piano for decades)ask me if what I was playing was a piece by chopin or rac. Then I told them I was just making it up as I went along. But I'll tell you right now that 8 years ago - I couldn't have done anything like that. It was simply the combination of wanting to teach myself something with pretty much blinding sticking my hands on the keys and playing notes until things actually started to sound good without me even having to work over sections to get ideas. And then it took about a decade to refine to where I am now. Does that mean I'm going to take a nap now and not practice anymore and try to become better? Why the hell would it mean that?
I have to apologize because honestly - I used to feel the exact same way about my music. It was so sacred to me. It was some unconquerable monster that I was the servant of. No. That's bullsh*t to me now. I don't serve music - it serves me. I simply don't have time to feel sorry for myself anymore that I am so lowly a creature as to be facing some seemingly insurmountable task of becoming a "good" composer. I'm not sheepish anymore when someone says "holy sh*t where did you learn to play like that" or when my neighbor is always asking me to come over and play piano. I just say "thanks". If they think it's amazing - who am I to question that? Am I smarter then they are? Who am I to say "no - actually you're wrong because I suck and I have no such talent as you describe"? Not for me to judge. I can accept how they feel. Obviously they are not retarded so their opinion is actually valid. Sorry. I just don't accept the argument you've made at all. I still think your music is great and very much worth studying however, so it doesn't change my viewpoint in that respect (which of course it shouldn't).