I am stupid. Well not really that was just a hook to get you to read the blog. I am actually pretty smart; probably smarter than 95% of the population, I went to a good high school and go to a good university, I can think rationally and I retain a lot of information. Unfortunately I am not smart enough and there is nothing I can do about it. I am not a genius, I will not be solving world hunger or causing world peace or even inventing a new form of drywall. Most likely I will be living a typical life, where my happiness will occasionally mix with resentment towards those who are undeservedly doing better than me, which would be enjoyable, but not perfect.

Earlier this year I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and for me the most telling thing in the book was that even incredibly gifted people, like Robert Oppenheimer, still needed to be incredibly lucky to accomplish what they did. I am not Robert Oppenheimer, so if he needed everything to work out perfectly, what chance do I have? Possibly because of extreme narcissism, I have always had grandiose plans for myself, even though I have always realized that these plans would rarely come to fruition. When expressing this view to a friend he said, "don't worry, you will be successful" while simultaneously removing all sharp objects from the room. However he missed the point; the issue for me never was being successful, because I figured that was a given. I am pretty confident I will be successful according to most conventional definitions, however I want to transcend middle-upper class success. In order for that to happen, I would need to focus on one discipline or get incredibly lucky. Ideally I would pick the most esoteric discipline to focus on so I could print out business cards that would say things like "Sam Greenwood: Global Authority in Post-Modern Metafiction". However I do value happiness, so while claiming to be a global authority would be awesome, I would much rather do something I like than get interviewed on CNN whenever an expert is needed to discuss the mating rituals of the Norweigan Black Bear. While I could make a conscious attempt to become world class at a discipline, getting really lucky is something I have little control over, but it would be awesome if it happened. Instead of being the bitter person expressed in the opening paragraph, other people would be jealous and bitter of me, which would do a great job of feeding both my ego and my insecurity.

The irony of all this is that one of my best skills is my ability to think rationally and this same skill makes it really hard to motivate me, because I realize how lucky I will need to get to accomplish what I want to accomplish. If were less rational I could delude myself into accomplishing things that I would accomplish a very small percent of the time and if I were genius level smart I may be able to actually accomplish these things. While this was a little depressing initially, I have come to terms with the fact I won't be curing cancer (sorry world) and have realized that I can still have an awesome life without being immortalized by one idea or invention, but I can still hope to get really lucky.