The war against mediocrity

I hope you had work off today like I did. I’m enjoying the off day even more than usual because last week was such a tough work week (read: like most work weeks for many people).

The last time I wrote to you, I was a single day into the week and was already drained. The following days continued to decay me, as I was in the office all but one day (a pattern I think may duplicate this week) and juggling millions of tasks at once. I already feel like I’ve forgotten the majority of my week, even though it felt like one of the longest weeks I’ve had in a while.

Last night, I fell asleep in front of the TV around 11 p.m. I have naturally been waking up around 8 a.m. I am suddenly wearing earrings again after multiple years of not caring enough to do so as well as them clashing with a chain I used to wear.

Biggest of all, I’m finally listening to podcasts. I just cannot get over that I am suddenly switched onto audio after years of podcasts just not clicking with me and my inability to fathom getting on Spotify for anything other than bops. My friends have clowned me for only liking news podcasts, or really, well-produced, educational, nearly humorless podcasts.

I leave every work day feeling accomplished enough but also with so much incomplete. So much of my job is just an endless pile of work that now feels daunting because of the transition stage my position is in while assisting the merrrgerrr. I am a corporate villain swooping into an office that wasn’t previously mine and utilizing an unclaimed standing desk.

Last week, I referred to my day as feeling like I was on a conveyor belt, and I still don’t feel like I’ve left that. Everything I do must be optimized because if it is not, I will either be 5 minutes late to something or, more likely, combust on the spot. I must have my clothes laid out the night before, lunch ready for the next day. I can’t just stumble out of bed to my desk when I “clock in.”

Waking up grows easier every day. What is stressful is how I have to edit a video before work and post it as an Instagram story for one of the new brands I’m working for while their social media person is on vacation. Meera encourages me immensely with this as she is an Adobe Premiere Pro pro. Before this week, you would never catch me working outside of my assigned hours. Now, I have to do these things because somebody has to.

The story is posted and I have no difficulty getting dressed and ready for my day (things I’ve done forever since my whole life always and eternally). I now join the slew of untraditional commuters since my job starts at 9:30 instead of 8 or 9. I arrive in the billowing winds of Battery Park, getting off at my station and seeing those big bus tour guides waiting outside trying to poach tourists for a day.

I arrive at work, and the only people I truly talk to in real life are my boss, his boss, and the custodian. The other people in the office are on the other side and are journalists/production staffers. I remember when I was a journalist, I used to mercilessly make fun of the corporate and salesy people to my friends. They literally worked above us, and we could watch them walk in their blazers down hallways as we languished in the newsroom pen.

I have lived long enough to see myself become this same villain, so it’s going to take some time before I can resume my water cooler swag I used to attempt having. Then again, the phrase “water cooler swag” is an oxymoron and shows that, even if it’s a real thing, I am too uncool to have it.

I chat all day in meetings and on Slack, but hours of silence go by while I race against an endless stream of objectives. When I feel inadequate, I look out the window next to me and feel proud of my physical location. Although I associate this place with my stress, it also symbolizes my success.

By the time the workday is over, I feel like one of those crusty, tiny white dogs, one specifically in need of a wash. On two of these days, I went to the gym. One of my more frivolous spends is having two gym memberships, Planet Fitness so I can work out anywhere and my nicer local gym. There’s a Planet Fitness a few blocks from my job, and I went there on that one day there was a wind warning because I felt like my life depended more on me doing crunches than being safe from the weather. Everyone there has the same blankness behind their eyes as I feel I have.

It’s wild working in a neighborhood that is designed for the working person. Gyms for you to forget about your day are here. Every fast-casual restaurant chain you could think of is here. Plenty of real yet semi-soulless bars are here. There are so many train stops so you can get the heck out as soon as possible. It’s designed to be forgetful.

And forget I do. My workout, my commute back home, I am numb to whatever has transpired. I come home and have to shower because I am the sweatiest person to walk the globe. Now home and snuggled up, I can finally eat dinner and maybe watch a program on the television that I fancy. I cannot fully calm down.

Suddenly, it’s bedtime again. The cycle continues. Each day more forgettable than the last. My New York transplant playground is now closed off until the sun rises again, and I’m not sure when that will be. At least during this transition period, I have joined the world again. My friends laugh at me as I express my strife because this is normal for most. It used to be normal for me, too!

I did have some exciting social parts of my week: seeing my visiting friend Hannah I haven’t seen since high school, seeing off my friend Matias before he leaves the country for a few months, and spontaneously hosting my brother for a weekend away from lesser NYC (Boston). Otherwise, I felt completely tapped out. Unable to respond to a text, to initiate a call.

Hopefully, this coming week will be better. I just felt so inadequate. Incapable of perfection at work, home, or in the social sphere. In some ways, I felt one of my least favorite feelings: mediocre.

Mediocrity is often the New York transplant’s greatest fear, mostly because it’s always  right over your shoulder. You come to a city full of authenticity and immense talent, which are two things you probably do not have in comparison to their best and second best. The people who come here have that part of them that wants to make it big, whatever that means according to one of five media works (Frank Sinatra songs, Sex and the City, Saturday Night Live, Wolf of Wall Street, and whichever Broadway musical was most popular when they were nine years old. Mine was SNL as a child and Sex and the City as an adult!).

You come here and feel how competitive everyone around you is, mostly because you’re around other transplant posers or people who were that way 10 years ago. The real New Yorkers have an ease about the subway that you cannot possess as you cling to a pole to keep you upright. You aren’t thinking about them, though. You’re thinking about the virtuosos, the prodigies, the success stories, even the smaller-scale ones in your new social circles. How can you, a native of a forgettable neighborhood with a forgettable degree, stack up?

When you compare to no end, you will always find a way to lose. You realize that you aren’t that special, and you can feel the boomers laugh at your participation trophy a**. Everyone hits this realization at different times, in different ways, and at different intensities. I like to think I’ve used my mediocre realizations to encourage betterment in my life — doing things that are natural to me, relieving myself of craziness, being grateful for the life I have and the people in it.

This transition into having a more conventional work life (for now, at least) has both increased and shrunk my mediocrity self-image. I feel too drained to be creative or smart about the world around me, which makes me feel conventional and mediocre.

Strangely, I’m also feeling that bootlicker adrenaline you get from working really hard that makes you feel important solely for grinding it out.

You win when you realize that mediocrity, in some ways, can be a good thing. Being just like everyone else could mean living a stable life. Being a dependable, predictable person can make you a good community member. Transplants strive so greatly to be both this uniquely talented person who is as comfortable with New York as a native. Think about the locals in other cities. They do the same things that native New Yorkers do: work, spend time with the people they love, and take little moments to enjoy life. A city cannot run if everyone is trying to cure cancer or run a DJ collective.

Native New Yorkers have a charm because they are not trying to be anybody else but themselves. I am at my best when I am fully myself, and that includes the normier parts of me. However, there is always a part of me that is a hater. I see the people I follow on social media that I know tangentially attempt creative or social endeavors and fail miserably. They make bad music, bad art, bad media…because they are boring! They are not giving me something unique. We see these people and worry that we have the same effect on others.

As comparison remains the thief of joy, there will always be someone who will be bored of you. There are some groups I enter and feel like the embodiment of the 2010 Basic White Girl stereotype as if I have Starbucks in hand and Uggs on feet. In other settings, I feel as if I am a completely different species than those I am around, an exotic creature to be wowed by (or jeered at). The race cannot be won on every track.

There are some areas in life where I’ve accepted my mediocrity. Fashion, for example. I am not great at being trendy, and I never put too much effort into my appearance. I usually am not bothered by this because it is natural to me, and I know that I cannot keep up with those in the front. Yet mediocrity, obviously, can mean negative more so than boring. I would never want to be an average girlfriend, friend, sister, or daughter. In relationships, I want to be the best I can be and could never accept the idea of being an average person in someone’s life.

Moreover, the idea of having a mediocre point of view would destroy my self-image, but that’s also part of why I started this newsletter in the first place. In making these newsletters, I wanted the practice to be a way for me to make something creative (not mediocre) but with the freedom of not being perfect (mediocre if I allow myself to be). Even in writing this entry about fighting against this war, I am too over it to fight anymore. I just need to embrace myself and accept whatever point of my life I’m in, mediocre or not.

Yesterday, I was walking around Bushwick with Meera and my brother. An older gentleman walking around randomly told us to have a good day to which we replied the same. He then said to stay out of trouble. I responded We’ll try our best! I thought this was a silly, warm statement that’s made funny by how sweet we look. Meera and Ben rightfully told me that was the most corporate possible response and that it would do numbers in an office. It was a more fun response than what they could come up with.

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