Justification

I am a firm believer in not regretting things I've written. That being said, in my last post I certainly didn't mean to imply that my twenty-something comrades are stupid, or that I am smart, or that I am superior, or even that I am inferior. When I sit down to write this blog, I just write, and often times it leads to unintentional points. It was not about my friends. I cannot stress that enough. It was not about you.

It was about me. The point I was trying to get to was that I am average. Painfully average.

I consider those people whom we may have considered nerds in high school, the ones who got straight A's and dominated all of the class discussions and spent their weekends reading just for the fun of it. I consider the characters from the movie Smart People, the ostracized intellectual protagonists in all of my favorite books, my father, all of those remarkably scholarly geniuses who can't quite find ways to connect to the general public. And I think, at least they can justify their lives. At least they can say, I don't go out drinking and clubbing every night, but I know more and understand more and enjoy more than those kinds of people do.

I consider the people I know who go out every night, who meet new and interesting people, who spend their time making incredible anecdotes for the rest of us to listen to and be jealous of. I consider the characters from movies and books who follow their hearts, who have no grand plan, who I admire for being strong enough to do exactly what they want to be doing, exactly what makes them happy. Those people who are going out drinking and clubbing every night, well, at least they can justify their lives. At least they can say, I don't bury myself in books and current affairs, but I'm living every moment to the fullest. I'm having fun.

But me? I'm just somewhere in the middle. I'm not smart enough to be considered a brooding intellectual and I'm not fun enough to be considered a socialite. I'm just a boring average girl with a boring average life, and I don't mean that to sound like self pity or even sadness. It's just sort of the way it goes.

I was driving behind a car sporting a bumper sticker of the infamous Laurel Ulrich quote "well behaved women seldom make history" and I remembered being younger and loving the idea of this. I loved the idea of wild women, of surrounding myself with wild spirits, of becoming one myself. I loved the idea of fighting for things, of changing things, of making an impact somehow, no matter how small. I loved the grandeur of believing in things so deeply.

But reading it now, I am just struck by the realization of how well behaved I am. I follow the rules. I care greatly about what it is expected of me and how well I fulfill those expectations. I make an average salary at an average job to pay an average mortgage for an average house in the average suburbs. I am not having great adventures or making great impacts. My goals are simple and realistic. I have become less and less of an idealist over the past couple of years.

When you're young, you swear that will never happen, but as we grow older, we make compromises. We fall into patterns, directions, roles and expectations. We become people we promised never to be. I'm only twenty three years old, and to feel like that so early on scares me a bit. It makes me want to change everything. Now. It makes me want to reconsider who I feel myself becoming.

And that's all I was really trying to say. I was trying to say that in wanting to be a bit of everything, it often feels like I became nothing - no label, no type, no place to really fit in, no way to justify my decisions. The past few years have not made me smarter or more fun. I've been stuck in what is comfortable and easy. I've been trying to define myself instead of trying to better myself. I haven't really been working towards anything, until I arrived here at this point, and considered that perhaps average simply isn't enough for me.

At least I can say I know that much.