April 14, 2025

For most of my life, I always thought I had to do something impressive to actually "live" but never got up the nerve to work towards making Anything. I made a lot of things but in my head, Anything meant works of art, invention, social groups, things that Change The World. It's only been more recently I found that I had only been existing until I met my spouse and that I actually enjoyed living a quieter life afterwards (I'm basically a hobbit whose seen and done some cool shit).

Much of my troubles have been self-inflicted due to my desire to be Someone Important slamming up against my fears and unwillingness to move past mediocre. As we've all seen during the last 25 years, this has been a dangerous combination with mediocre people with grand designs and little interest in improvement (or a severe lack of self-awareness) constantly fucking up the world. I've had to - and still need to - remind myself daily that the cases where someone changed the world for the better were due to things I either cannot control (sheer luck) or need to bust my ass to produce (gaining mastery in something specific). That shouldn't be an excuse to wallow in being mediocre but a way to remember that just simply sitting around and dreaming of Being Great or even desiring that as an outcome often leads to living a shallow life.

Work towards goals without expecting adulation or glory and learn the most you can. The focus of life is supposed to be the variety and expansive scope of experiences. You don't get that by just obsessing over Greatness. You get that by just doing things because they're worth doing on their own. - A.B. 4/14/25

Apologies if this was too jumbled - the point of these journal entries are to capture my thought process and clear communication isn't the highest priority. A good reason why editing is always important to the writing process. Expect more like this should you decide to read the other Journal posts.

Photo by Micheile Henderson (Upsplash)