mediocrity – The frustrations of an overthinker

Is Country Music A Real Danger?

Country music is sneaky and fuckin manipulative. This may sounds like an odd statement but in my experience, it’s becoming like a very subtle form of crack that slowly pulls you in and gets you addicted with a sense of defeat and developing shame. Actually, it’s possibly more like opiate based painkillers but lets not get caught up on the accuracy on poor analogies as it detracts from the point which is my sinking addiction into this bizarre genre.

I love flicking across the music channels on my telly box and have done since we got our first shitty cable box which had a peppering of shit channels and then other channels with tunes. Music videos are just amazing: They’re visual additions to someone’s masterpiece. As the channel numbers grew, a country channel then appeared. This was a bit different and very soon I would always have a good laugh with it’s very simple music beats and chords, poor shows with bad filming and incompetent hosts and substandard music videos. Most of the videos seemed to be about someone’s lost love, dead dog or dead log that they loved. The astounding simplicity of it was hilarious, but over the last 12 months there’s been a weird evolution. I’m finding it soothing and comforting. I gently rock from side to side when it’s on as if I’m a resident in a care home.

It’s scaring the shit out of me; it represents a decline; a sense of aging and a sense of loss. Will I no longer be blasting out 90’s house or rock music. Will this slight comfort become stronger and stronger where I become a country fan. I quite fancy having a cowboy hat tbf, and maybe a bit of line dancing would be fun. But just a bit of it; I do not want to adopt this as part of my identity.

As always, my infuriating anxieties are linked to losing control and fearing becoming mediocre. Ultimately, this fear is possibly projected feelings linked to the recognition that mediocrity exists within me. But then again, we can’t always be extreme at all times but I reject the idea of declining into being average and being just like everyone else. Obviously parts of my life are mundane and average but I fear being a non-entity. As such, there’s overcompensation. My alcohol habits both serve to allow me to escape my inner frustrations and feel like I’m not watching shit like Strictly or I’m A Celeb on weekend evenings. But now maybe I’ll be getting pissed and practising line dancing.

Mediocrity is Just a Wanky Reaction to Society’s Need for us to Conform

Mediocrity enrages me especially when I see it in myself and in my own life. The way society encourages and manipulates us to conform means that most people just give up and live on some shit autopilot planet of doing the 2.4 kids, 9-5 meaningless shit work and feel a bit wild by having half a glass of pinot while listening to Coldplay.

It’s such a soft and submissive response to allow your life to be dictated to where you go through the day without purpose until you die, just to leave your offspring to do the same. Does society need these ant-like characters to exist to keep it going. I guess it does in society’s present form but then it’s that self-feeding system where nothing changes. Society runs well because people conform but then many lose their identity as they’re swallowed up and rewarded for being just like everyone else. The most obvious rewards from peer and societal approval and a monthly salary that is just enough to fulfil your needs but not enough to feel secure enough to break free from the rat race. But that doesn’t really matter, as you’re so conditioned to accept your place in society, that even if you could afford to not work, you wouldn’t have fucking clue what else to do. Obviously the conspiracy theorist twats will see this all the government’s doing where they control us to fund their lifestyles but at least they have the bollocks to question what’s going on and they don’t automatically accept the spoon of mediocrity so readily.

Like most of our annoyances, they’re born out of our own relationship with them and fear of them. So I fear being a mediocre twat and it concerns me when I see evidence of this in myself and there’s a lot of fucking evidence tbf. I live in a suburban semi, have kids, a wife, pets and spend too much time on social media or watching shit on telly because I’m too tired from working to provide the mediocre life to do anything else on most evenings. Pre-adult mediocrity, I went out more, explored more and felt less of a need for routine and structure to keep me grounded. Now I’m emotionally attached to these things and feel out of control should something slip or alter. I’ve unwittingly become a victim of conditioning.

So to be more free means engaging in my identity more? Being expressive and creative. I shall write ‘I love Coldplay’ in large letters in the road in my own shit as a first step and see how this feels. I may have to save my bodily waste product for few days which may not be pleasant and if this becomes my signature art style it’s possible that I’ll lose the said wife and suburban comfort. Maybe that’s the test I need: To lose it to see if I’d miss the world I’ve been conditioned to create.