I’m trying to write something.
I wrote a paragraph. Actually I wrote one and half paragraphs.
But they were less than perfect so I am abandoning them.
I tried to set myself a project.
A reason to regularly return to my blog.
I thought I’d write a thought for Thursday.
Every Thursday from now until the end of the year.
But then I didn’t have any thoughts.
Because I am a vacuous silly woman refusing to use a comma between those descriptive words those adjectives.
But actually I had lots of thoughts.
And I just couldn’t settle on one that seemed worthwhile.
Because I so desperately want to be worthwhile myself and I don’t always believe that I am.
Number one thought was mediocre.
Well, the thought itself was old news.
Its my biggest fear. That I will never be anything more than mediocre.
Thought number two was
Write about Fomo. The Fear of Missing Out.
I couldn’t decide which thought was better. Or were they maybe the same thought.
If they were two thoughts
Then I would have to decide which
I would write about, which was better and I couldn’t.
What if I made the wrong choice
And the thought that I wrote about was the wrong one.
What if the other one would have been better, would have been inspiring
And all I’d done was ramble on in some less than perfect way,
In some less than perfect paragraph
Or paragraph and a half
About my fear of
Mediocrity.
This is not a half baked poem.
It is a prose piece
Which is desperately trying to be something else.
I think it's ironic (and I mean this in an un-cruel, un-mocking way) that this is about the fear of missing out and mediocrity, and yet you didn't know what to write about – the very fear of missing out you talk about.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's about missing out at all, in a way, but rather ‘will you live to regret the choice you made?’ Not that long ago, a dear friend and I had a similar conversation; she told me that it's not about the being afeared of missing out on things, but – like I alluded to – was more about living with the choices. she said that all you had to do was what you thought was right – not necessarily correct, but rather what your gut told you, what you felt was the right thing to do in the situation. more often than not, the option – choice, path, road – we end up choosing is the one that is the right one, but if it's not, then we live with it, learn to live with it, and make a damn good sight of living and making the best of it. it's a bit like in Cloudstreet (which i am reading for the umpteenth time) – they don't have much, but they learn to live with what they have, squeeze every last ounce of goodness out of everything, and make the best of every situation; they survive because it’s the thing they know how to do best.
mediocrity is, i think, just another way of saying 'i'm scared that what i have to say is not worth anything,' but the fact you have this blog, have the words and thoughts to be able to fill it, and are who you are, means that mediocrity (and, by extension, being mediocre) is not really an option. It’s about trusting yourself and trusting your own judgement, having faith in that what you have to say matters to someone somewhere and knowing that and not worrying about whether it is profound or trivial or nonsensical or seemingly worthless.
I know that I am plagued at times by the niggling voices in my head that tell me that what I have to say is not worth saying, but I say it anyway, because I know that I want to say it. And if there is one person in the world who will listen, then it’s worth saying.
gs
I don't know that it is really ironic. And I say that as someone who is always very cautious about making a point on correct or incorrect use of the words irony and ironic, who has been battling with its meaning since buying the album Jagged Little Pill in 1996, and who needs to look it up in a dictionary before using it. (Yes, I looked it up again just now).
ReplyDeleteAnd the my initial reason for saying its not ironic that I wrote about a fear of mediocrity when I was having issues convincing myself that what I had to say was worthwhile, or of FOMO, because that was kind of the point. There was no hidden agenda, no meaning other than the intended one of: let me explore my genuine fear of missing out and of a life of mediocrity.
However, I have now discovered that when it comes to literature, while the first use of the word irony is :
"a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated."*
the second, and esp in contemporary writing (which i guess this blog is, by virtue of my being alive and it being written in the now, whether or not it is literature is another debate) is
"a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., especially as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion."
So maybe it was that.
And yes, I was having an intentional dig at myself, making a very self aware statement in saying I rejected my less than perfect paragraphs on mediocrity and FOMO. And instead turned it into a poem, which I refused to label as a poem so as to avoid genre judgement.
But thanks all the same, and thank you for engaging with last week's thought for thursday. And you're right. Sometimes even knowing that you have an audience of one, is so much better than an audience of none. Discussion is always welcome.
cheers.
(*I copied and pasted these definitions from the ever brilliant dictionary.com)