What’s wrong with being mediocre?
November 12th, 2009 by boon
I’ve been bored of the Internet lately. I’ve stopped checking my twitter messages, reading my newsfeeds, and going on sites I used to frequent just for the fun of it. I feel completely overwhelmed by information, and I feel wholly inadequate to survive the 21st century.
Everyone seems to be really upbeat. Articles are constantly talking about the next best thing. And for some reason, no one seems to want to stop. It’s really scary – everyone seems to be really getting ahead in life, and I feel really out of step – like stepping on a dance partner’s feet or something.
It’s like I’m expecting someone to tell me – “it’s okay to stop living for awhile”, “leave the laptop in the bag”, “forget about how your friends are doing”, “go to bed”, “it’s not going to make any difference whether the Palm Pixi is going to be a hit or not”, “it’s okay to do the same boring thing over and over again”.
Because in some ways, that’s what I’m doing now. And I don’t feel like I can change my circumstances very much, such that I have exciting things I absolutely needed to share with the whole world. I just don’t have anything going on at the moment that’s very exciting. And I’m thinking that’s what a lot of people call, “a mediocre life” – when folks start settling down and getting into a routine of things.
I actually believe that most people live mediocre lives 90% of the time. That they have routines that don’t change very much. Or wishes and dreams that seldom get acted upon. And conversations that don’t change very often. And time seems to just seems to drift by. And for these people, that’s just the way life is.
I actually don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the Internet is inherently a very explosive sort of environment – an explosion of activities. Emails. Blogs. Messages. Articles. Feeds. Comments. Streams. Votes. Tags. Notes. Clicks. If all this activity ever grinded to a halt, then the Internet would cease being the Internet.
It’s like – on the Internet – you can’t ever be someone mediocre. It’s almost like you needed to be someone with an opinion worth giving, or someone with a message worth sharing, or someone whose goals were so important that you needed to click on stuff or to read something or respond to something. You couldn’t just be “nobody” on the Internet, because everyone else is a nobody and it’s like you need to prove that you’re not because it already became so brain-numbingly easy. Just click. Or reply. Or comment. Or upload that photo. Something. Anything.
But, here I am with absolutely no motivation to check my twitter messages or read my newsfeeds and I’m telling myself it’s fine. It’s fine to be mediocre, and to just live the way some people live – without a care in the world.