I realized my mediocrity early on. Say, about the second grade.
Nowadays, I have to struggle maintain my mediocrity and not slip into total loserdom.
Not everybody is mediocre. Some of us are utter failures and that is not mediocrity.
I’m pretty mediocre, but I take comfort in the fact that I am a very good, kind, compassionate person.
I have a mediocre job, and probably always will, but I do it to the best of my ability.
I’m mediocre in appearance, but I have gone from a size 20 to a size 13, and I’ve had a few days where I am fabulous! 
Some of us have occaisional flashes of brilliance or stupidity. Yep, we’re only mediocre at being mediocre…
I’m clinging by my fingernails to the lower edge of mediocre.
I wanted to go into meteorology as a teenager, but in college I realized I didn’t have the mathematical aptitude for it.
I’m almost 35 and have never made more than $12 an hour, and since April haven’t earned a penny. (Out on psychiatric leave for what was supposed to be a month, but there’s some rule that a background investigation has to be done before my badge is returned, which is still working its way through the bureaucracy.)
I’ve never been passionate about anybody or anything. More and more lately, I wonder whether it’s even worth the bother of continuing since there seems to be bugger-all to look forward to. I’m not good for much, really.
I’m clinging by my fingernails to the lower edge of mediocre.
I wanted to go into meteorology as a teenager, but in college I realized I didn’t have the mathematical aptitude for it.
I’m almost 35 and have never made more than $12 an hour, and since April haven’t earned a penny. (Out on psychiatric leave for what was supposed to be a month, but there’s some rule that a background investigation has to be done before my badge is returned, which is still working its way through the bureaucracy.)
I’ve never been passionate about anybody or anything. More and more lately, I wonder whether it’s even worth the bother of continuing since there seems to be bugger-all to look forward to. I’m not good for much, really.
Badge did you say! :eek:
…we don’t need no stinking badges
Sorry, pal. I just can’t see myself as another shrimp in the pail (unless it becomes important to adopt that profile). I feel (mostly) successful.
It dawned on me when I was 12 that I wasn’t going to be a famous architect-pianist making $400K per year with a wife and kids and a peachykeen, happy life. Since then, I’ve gotten used to the idea.
I can relate to what David Simmons said about knowing a little about a lot of things. That’s how I feel–I’ll never stand out because, while I’m above average in many things, I’m not really close to the top of any of them. Heck, I doubt I’m even in the top one percent of anything.
Realizing that you’re ‘mediocre’ automatically disqualifies you from being so - you are now a person with insight, which the vast majority of people lack.
‘Mediocre’ is a lousy word - by whose standard are you judging yourself? An artificial standard that someone dreamed up based on what they considered ‘special’ or ‘successful’? Do you think that your failure to measure up to this artificial standard makes you of lesser worth than other humans?
You’re alive. That’s all that is required for you to have the right to walk on the face of this earth. You do not have to ‘prove’ yourself in anyway, you do not have to justify the use of the air you breathe. You do not have to make a significant contribution to society, or to mankind, to ‘earn’ your place in the world - you did that the first time you drew breath. You’re a unique and special individual - no one else is just like you. Rejoice in it. Stop letting other people judge your ‘worthiness’ - they have goals and dreams and standards that have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with themselves.
For you depressed ones: a few months ago I was in despair, convinced I was worthless, a total failure, a waste of oxygen. I made the mistake of placing judgement of my ‘worthiness’ in the hands of another person - but no matter what I did, what sacrifices I made, how hard I worked, I was never good enough. Every achievement was scorned and belittled; whenever I accomplished something that couldn’t be denied, I was confronted with a higher standard to be met, until I could do nothing but fail. When I found myself seriously considering removing my worthless self from this world, I began looking for help - not for my depression and lack of self-esteem, but because I wanted to know why, despite my best efforts, I was always ‘below par’.
I found that there was nothing ‘wrong’ with me, that I wasn’t a ‘failure’ or ‘worthless’ - instead, the person whose approval I had sought so desperately after had a personality disorder. His own self-esteem was so low that he could not accept that any ‘successful’ human being would continue to associate with him, so he derided every success in fear that it would lead to his abandonment.
Discovering this was like being freed from prison. I realized my mistake in placing judgement of my ‘worthiness’ in the hands of another person. I am the only judge of my worth as a person. Other peoples’ judgements are not to be accepted at face value because they have motives they may not even be aware of. I will look at a criticism, and I will decide if it is accurate and if I should attempt a change, but I will not accept criticism just because someone offers it. I’ve found that, quite often, when you hear criticism, what you are really hearing is ‘fear’ - fear of abandonment, fear of being displaced or surpassed, fear of being perceived as inadequate - fears too many of us share needlessly.
You are the absolute best at being you. No one is more qualified to hold that position, and no one else is qualified to judge your success at doing it! Don’t place the judgement of your value as a person in the hands of others - they don’t have the personal investment in that judgement that you do. Conciously or unconciously, they will use that opportunity to further their own goals, soothe their own fears, bolster their own self-esteem.
And remember that as long as you are alive, you have options - death takes all of the options away.
I sound like a sap, don’t I? But I’m a happy sap.
Dammit, coosa, I was all set to rant about my age, unfitness, unattractiveness, social incompetence, and mediocrity, and how no potential mate will ever look at me again, and that there are people half my age who are drawing better than I ever will, and how turning 39 is The Beginning Of The End, time to start discarding those old dreams… and you took all that away from me!
Curses! Can’t I even enjoy my decrepitude?!! 
Absolutely NOT!!!
'Cause I’m several years older than you, and if you’re decrepit, I must be moribund.
If it’ll cheer you up any - my husband was 42 when we met and married (20 years ago - I was 24); one of his older sisters was in her fifties when she re-met and married her high school sweetheart.
An 18-year age difference!? :eek: That must have been difficult… unusual for us English-speaking North Americans.
Since I posted that message I got good news from my best friend who’s just gone to the west coast–looks like his art has been Noticed–I hope!-- and tomorrow I’m going to the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, there to meet friends. Things’re looking up.
But thank you for your cheer-up.
I’m still working up to mediocrity.
Unusual, true, but not too difficult - by some fluke we grew up in very similar circumstances, so had more in common with each other than with others our own ages, so we worked it out.
Congrats to your friend, and have a great weekend in Toronto!
Thanks! I live here–I can have a great weekend in Toronto whenever I want*!
[sub]*Except workdays, but including holidays[/sub]
Is my PC screwing up or did we change threads…
damn, I’m not even mediocre enough to keep up… 
I haven’t. I don’t plan to. That’s the same as giving up.
My apologies, t-keela - like the newly-quit smoker who begins harassing all of the smokers in his/her life, some of us who’ve groped through black despair until finding light and freedom can’t resist sharing our discovery with those we fear are lost in the same dark pit. Such cheerfulness is probably incredibly annoying if you’re not in the mood for it, and I’m sorry if I’ve sidetracked the intent of the thread.
Please carry on.
Well, if you’re talking about mediocrity in a purely intellectual sense, then nobody on these boards is mediocre. Hell, a lot of the people we call trolls and nutjobs seem smarter than many folks I meet in my day-to-day life.
Take my boss, for example. He makes $60,000 a year, but he can’t spell his way out of a paper bag. He has to ask someone (me) who makes 1/3 of what he does to not only spell half his words for him, but to repeatedly teach him how to scroll down to the bottom of a web page. Seriously.
My other boss claims (almost proudly, it seems) that he never, ever reads anything because it makes his eyes hurt. Well, get some glasses then, you dimwit! Every uninformed, ignorant, and sometimes downright offensive opinion I’ve ever heard you spout is evidence of your mediocrity!
And those are the bosses! I’m not even going to go into the sometimes startling mediocrity displayed by their underlings (“Three plus two is five, right?” - I’ve actually been asked that!)
The simple truth is that I know very few people in real life who could hold their own on these boards. When we have some free time in our computer labs at school, I often walk around the room and glance at what people are doing on the Internet. Every damned one of them is playing games, looking at pro wrestling web pages, reading sports scores, or engaged in some other mindless activity. I’m the only one sitting there reading a four-page Great Debate on foreign policy.
It is my belief that if you are inquisitive, open-minded, and at least fairly well-read, you cannot be mediocre. There are far too many people who possess none of these qualities to argue otherwise.
The very fact that you’re even here, fighting ignorance and reading the wise words of Cecil, proves that none of you are mediocre, not by any stretch of the imagination.