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July 21, 2006

utopian mediocrity

I am no longer in Pittsburgh. While I found it to be cute, quirky little city, I did not decide to abandon my life to pick up and move to the steel capital of the world. Tempting as it was. Anyways, it appears to be about time for my monthly blabbering. See, if my relationship with my blog was a friendship, we would be reduced to periodical life updates rather than actual meaningful discussion. Not that life updates aren't critical to good friendship. Clearly they are, but to me they seem to be more like the red tape of friendship, if you will. I'm not sure I agree fully with that, but I don't appear to be passionate enough to employ the backspace button and think of something either shallower or deeper.

So here are the things I've been concentrating on not writing about.

Life updates, for all aforementioned reasons.

It's been a month since I wrote anything. Like anyone's surprised.

It's 8:30 on Friday night and this, whatever it is, is the only meaningful thing I'll do all night. And no, I'm not feeling overly self-important with the addition of meaningful to that sentence. It's just a sliding scale, that's all. In other words, writing is more meaningful than TV-watching. Agreed?

I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what to have for dinner, then ended up eating a tuna sandwich.

The Cubs are so terrible that it makes me want to dig my left eye out of the socket with a spoon. Still, I went to two games at Wrigley this week.

Radiohead is really good. Too self-evident.


So, since all of that is out, I have resorted to entertaining myself with my Google Home Page Quote of the Day. Here's today's:
"Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters." -- Margaret Halsey

Anyone know who Margaret Halsey is? Cause this is a fantastic quote. At work, people's shortcomings, as she calls them, have been driving me nuts. Obviously, they don't perceive those particular traits to be as irritating as I do. Otherwise, I would have to assume, they'd work to get better. And maybe they are. I always tell myself that you can't tell if a rookie is going to be any good until he has a few years under his belt. Maybe the same is true in other professions as well. If so, I would like to propose some sort of minor league system. An apprenticeship, if you will. Granted, most people get better at something as they gain experience. But you don't call a rookie up from Triple-A to play third base every day if he's hitting below the Mendoza line (that's an average under .200).

Now, that being said, as I gain experience, I will become better at what I do. I like to think that I was hired because I'm pretty decent at what I do. I'll never really know though due to society's fixation on blowing smoke up asses, whether it be employer-to-employee or vice versa. That bugs me. I never hear criticisms. I ask people for criticisms. It's a good way to figure out how to get better. It seems now that thin skins and maintaining a false sense of high morale assure us that mediocrity is destined to prevail.

OK, so I know that I listed the Cubs in the Topics to Avoid List, but once I used to word mediocrity, I couldn't stop thinking about the Loveable Losers. Remember when people thought that the Loveable Losers alias was on its way out? That was funny. Interestingly the Cubs' payroll before the trading deadline, at which they are bound to unload at least one or two guys, is the highest in the NL Central and seventh-highest in the majors. Who says you can buy wins?

Posted by ben at 8:56 PM | Comments (1)