How to be mediocre at everything

It seems Fate has dealt me with a constitution maladapted for specialization: an insatiable curiosity with an undercurrent of quick boredom, easy ignition, and an oxen stubbornness. A neophile, I live for the new: an impractical skill I likely won't use more than a handful of times a year, the strange shape of foreign words in my mouth, a flavor profile from a distant cuisine, the shallow surface of an interesting, obscure field.

The result is a skillset like a Swiss knife in a psychedelic dream. Vaguely useful for multiple odd tasks. Forms constantly shifting. A valuation nightmare.

In other words: I am fairly good at a lot of things, which means I'm an expert in exactly none of them. Jane of all trades, master of none, yes, yes, oftentimes better than master of one. Neither is better than the other – the grass is always greener on the other side, to throw another cliché into the mix – I just happen to fall into the ranks of the generalists.

In lieu of bemoaning who I am, as I have already done over and over, here is acceptance in the form of field notes in case they prove useful to others walking similarly untrod paths —

A blessing and curse, this hunger for the new. A hallmark of youth – or is it the secret to staying young? – this uncanny ability to start all over again as The Fool.

After a certain age, I think it requires a unique kind of bravery to become a true beginner, humble and dedicated and unknowing. A beginner must set aside their ego, or in extreme cases, slay it to make way for new growth which is, without exception, rife with the risk of failure, peril, and – gasp – embarrassment.

The first time I danced at a salsa club, taking the hand of a gentleman that was an obvious club regular and expert dancer, I kept spin-slamming into his body and stepping on his shiny leather shoes.

When I picked up a barbell at the gym or called a prospective client the first time, I knew how silly I looked. Skin rippling with doubt like a heatwave distorting my face as I trembled beneath 35 pounds and my first unforgettable failed negotiation.

The redness in my face subsiding, I returned, less tentative each time, onto the dance floor, the impact mats, the negotiation table, out of stubborn resistance — If I must quit, it won't be at the starting line.

This is the hardest part: emerging into the arena of the world, on your knees if you must, vulnerable yet armed with some invisible weave of belief and determination.

It's true that many doors are closed to us, but of the open ones, how many do we step through, even for a mere glimpse?

I don't mean this as an accounting of opportunities won and lost, but as a splash of ice-cold water on the part of my mind that always seems to fall asleep at the wheel, waking up only to complain about the unpleasantness of where I have arrived — nothing is fixed, and I may yet make fire with jackstones.

This is where I feel the most Filipino, truthfully, this ability to make anything of anything: fence spikes out of cut-up plastic bottles, humor from horror, a mode of transportation and cultural symbol from a wartime relic in the form of the jeepney. The papers like to call it the resilient Filipino spirit, which is mostly true, we are a hardy, crafty folk, though the demand for unnecessary resilience — exercised in a deeply unjust and corrupt system and used by our government as a feel-good narrative to evade hard questions of accountability — angers me; I dream of chipping it away with you until it's reduced to ash. I'd like one day to see what this collective spirit really looks like when untrampled by exploitation and the pressures of mere survival...

Still, I see this as an inheritance to handle responsibly, inseparable from my person as I navigate the world collecting trinkets and ideas, retrofitting them into something lovely to myself but often illegible to anyone else. For entering available doors and creating with whatever I find, a mediocre achievement I hang proudly on my wall.

The process is the point is the pleasure. When there is satisfaction in the action, a quiet inner purring, a gasp, some click — my feet feel lighter. The beginner's shame lifts like a banished shadow.

Banished by the lustrous feel of a new brush pen when I practice my rusty calligraphy, or the first reveal of an imperfect linocut print, or reviewing the first hundred photos I took with a DSLR camera.

The wordless understanding of a new dance when its rhythm starts to settle in the hips. Happens about two classes or glasses in. Mysteriously instant when done privately to my secret playlist blasting in the living room.

Frustration melted away at the taste of my first successful beurre blanc, drizzled generously over scallops I enjoyed with my favorite person in the world.

The stupidly massive relief, every single time, when I write anything to completion — poem, lyric essay, book review, academic paper.

I almost want to apologize for being bad at any of this but I'm having too much fun. And after years of practicing such joyous mediocrity, I finally think I'm not really that bad anymore. You don't have to agree, but it's quite peaceful here.