Just an average kind of gal

Do you ever have those moments when you realize just how squarely you reside in the land of mediocrity, and feel… disappointed?

I have a hard time listening to my own album.  I cringe because I hear and focus on everything that could be better about it.  It doesn’t match my vision of singer/songwriter creative genius unlike the world has ever seen.  It’s just ‘okay’.

See, in kindergarten they told me I could be an astronaut or the next president if I wanted, and the problem is, I believed them.  Maybe it’s the eternal optimist in me, or the bootstraps can-do attitude.  (Don’t get any crazy ideas here – pigs will fly around the time I start voting Republican.)  But I do believe in the human spirit.  And apparently that translates into ridiculously high standards for myself.  I should be able to do it all and be the best at everything!  (Putting your thoughts in writing is the best way to realize your own ridiculous-ness, as proven time and time again in this blog.)

And then it hits me right between my ordinary eyes on my strikingly normal forehead, that I’m just average.  Should I be okay with this? 

Insert ad to buy my album:  It’s great… really!

www.brittneal.com

 I think part of the issue is that I truthfully know I can do better.  And there’s really no excuse for not reaching your potential.  It’s like trying to hold in a cough in church – you’re just annoying everybody with those dainty little unproductive grunts that are just as loud in a giant, silent sanctuary.  Just get on with it and go whole hog! 

Insert funny analogy:  You know I’ve been trying to get back on the exercise fitness bandwagon of late.  And between my fair skin and my lack of training, and an unfortunate closeness of my capillaries to the skin, within 5 minutes of jogging, I tend to look like I’m dying.  Like Santa Claus, but in distress.  It’s embarrassing, but I can’t let that prevent me from ever exercising again.  And I don’t.

So even though the old adage has proven itself more true every day – ‘the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know’ – and I feel like a smaller more insignificant spec on this earth with each passing day, I have to get over myself and keep trying.  Live my life, as average is at may be. 

And I have to quit being so negative.  You know there’s a fancy psychological name for this.  (There’s also a fancy psychological name for students of abnormal psychology such as myself who self-diagnose based on the myriad of symptoms they have to read and digest.)  It’s called cognitive restructuring, and it has to do with the fact that the messages we ‘tell’ ourselves are, it turns out, incredibly important. 

Therefore I, the uncertified doctor with zero credentials, prescribe a tall dose of restructuring my cognitive.  I’m not ready to become a cranky old biddy just yet. 

I think I can, I think I can… chugga-chugga chugga-chugga choo choo!