Guide to Gleefully Squandering Your Potential.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve only ever had people blow a bunch of smoke up your ass about your potential. As far as life-defining struggles go, it’s a good one to have. There are plenty of kids out there who only ever had Mr. Rogers tell them they were special. And that’s just some slow-talking guy on TV who gets boring and weird once you turn like five years old. By then you’re just hoping that Purple Panda shows up in the Land of Make Believe or there’s an “opera” episode or picture picture shows something that’s actually awesome like a lollipop factory instead of something boring that you don’t care about like a soap factory, and everything else is making you super impatient, like how long it’s taking this guy to feed his fish. My point is: Mr. Rogers is a good man, but he’s not enough to convince you that you’re special. It takes a village to do that.

Mr. Rogers does have a point. Yes, you’re actually special from a scientific standpoint. Your arms and legs are different sizes and shapes than any other human being alive. And if you’re a kid in danger of growing up into a world where not thinking you have any potential at all will lead you to be dead or in jail before your 21st birthday, it’s good to hear from somebody somewhere that you’re special and you can do things in this world with your life that nobody else but you can do. I’ll happily tell you that. But you probably don’t have access to a blog and I don’t know where you live. And if it’s in the slums of Rio, I probably can’t make it there. But you’re special. Like for real. You can do anything you set your mind to, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. Keep shining. (Or maybe just try not to rape anybody).

Everybody else who’s not an orphan running around in the street child gang in the slums of Rio: you are not special. At all. That’s bullshit. You’re just a dude doing regular dude things. Stop following your dreams. Your dreams are bullshit. Stop pretending that you can claim some kind of ownership over the things you enjoy. You’re not a good graphic designer. Your graphic designs suck. That book you’re working on is a waste of time that nobody will ever want to read. Your YouTube movies are not funny. They’re choppily edited and sophomoric. That art installation is poorly conceived. It does not make me stop to think about anything. It’s apparent that you just got baked and slapped a bunch of shit together and called it art. Your opinions about everything you have an opinion about are boring and uninformed. And I cannot stress this enough: nobody in the world actually wants to see your improv group. Nobody. In the world. Even if you’re great. Even if you’re fantastic at anything you’re doing, all of this is true. And I say all of this to you as a guy who’s following his own stupid dreams and having his own stupid opinions about those dreams. This is all coming from an unspecial person who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about and is lost and confused and clearly more than a little neurotic.

Does that feel better? It feels better to me.

I had a couple of parents who always went all the way up my butt whenever I brought home a B or, God forbid, a C from school. From a very early age I was told how special I was, how talented, and how smart, and I had very high expectations constantly impressed upon me. I was supposed to get straight A's because I could fairly easily have gotten sraight A's. B's and C's were unaccaptable.

This logic haunts me now too, somewhat. The fact that age 29 I am a receptionist at a small company that sells self storage properties in Elgin, IL is pretty much totally unacceptable. My parents might have actually exploded if you’d told them this in 1994. It’s more or less the 29 year old equivalent of never doing my homework and doing well enough on smarts and charm that I can get away with a B or a C, and that’s fine with me because really all I want to do is play touch football with a permanent QB and I don’t give a damn about A’s. If you told 1994 my parents about my current life the only thing that could potentially calm down 1994 my parents, after reviving my Mom, would be if you made sure to mention that I’d be happy, that I’d have a great girlfriend and a community of supportive friends and acquaintances, and I’d be able to do whatever I enjoy in my free time, whether it’s bike jumps or getting baked and watching Voltron or doing creative things like plays and artsy things and comedy stuff. They might look askance at the Voltron thing, but that’s immaterial. The important thing is: Voltron is totally amazing when you’re baked. Totally amazing.

Also I think there’s a point in there about being happy with what you have and not listening to the voices inside of you who’d tell you that you’re somehow worthless because you don’t have more.

But let’s ignore that and concentrate on Voltron for a minute.

Would you believe it if I told you that the special forces team of space crusaders from the galactic alliance of the good planets do not actually form the titular robot until the 4th episode? Even though the title sequence explains how they form the titular robot? Would you believe that? I didn’t when I saw it. (also: I love the phrase "titular robot") The narrative structure of the first four Voltron cartoons must be totally unique in the history of all human literature. It actually moves backwards. There are large sections of it that are best described as “exposition of exposition.” Nobody explains things that have already happened like the Voltron force. If you watch Voltron baked, this narrative structure will make you laugh until your whole body hurts.

This is as good a way to spend the limited amount of time you’ve been given on this Earth as any. If you enjoy laughing at the regressive narrative structure of a cut-rate Japanese cartoon designed for the sole purpose of selling a toy that combines five robot lions into one big robot man, that is.

I don’t feel guilty at all for enjoying and pursuing this activity. Maybe that’s selfish of me and I should technically be spending my time giving pep talks and vocational training to gangs of street kids in the ghettos of Rio, but baked Voltron is more fun. It is not a waste of my potential at all, either. You know what’s fun to people who really are geniuses? Figuring out the universe’s size and rate of expansion based on the complicated algorithms of a distant galaxy’s “red shift.” I could barely write that sentence without falling asleep, but that’s what real geniuses enjoy doing. I’m not a genius, despite the fact that my parents insisted I was in 1990 to the point where I had to go to math camp for a whole summer. Math camp. I was ten. That’s what I did with my summer. If that’s what geniuses do, I want no part of it. I’d rather just get baked and watch Voltron and have that be my potential instead of anything that involves math camp, thank you very much 1990 my parents.

One of the best things that ever happened in my life, in retrospect, was when my Mom and Dad took me to a shrink once when I was in junior high school to figure out why I was underachieving. I remember it being super duper awkward, but more importantly I remember the shrink telling my Mom, who was incensed over my low-effort B’s and C’s, to “back off.” Back off. One of the greatest days of my life. We never saw that dude again.

Of course I’ve got all the neuroses that come from a lifetime of having your parents up your butt, but it’s not like you can ever escape neuroses. You’re going to be weird in some way. I’m just glad that my weirdness comes from being a little too hard on myself instead of from feeling like I can’t tell anybody in the world that I just want to have sex with a big fat hairy dude in pantyhose and a house dress. I don’t. But if I did, I damn sure would. I have no shame-based upbringing stopping me from enjoying all the fat hairy dude panyhose housedress sex I could possibly want. Maybe that's why I want none. I don't know.

But you get the idea. You could go a lot less wrong than being all the way up your own ass about your potential. It’s actually a good thing. And you have to tools to combat it, by saying “back off” to yourself whenever you start to lose sleep over the fact that you’re 29 and you haven’t replaced the overhead bathroom light bulb yet even though it’s been 4 days. Just say “back off.” You don’t have to be a genius, here. You can use the vanity mirror lights and pick up that overhead light bulb when it’s convenient and you have the money.

Another thing: where the fuck do I get off dispensing all this advice, right? My parents told me I was a smart kid for my entire life and I at least partially believe them, that’s where I get off. This means that my central inner conflict is an egomaniacal waste of everybody’s time. I move forward with the assumptions, passed down to me by my oversupportive parents, that I’m talented, that I’m smart, and that I’m special, and, further, these are not only virtuous qualities to have in general, but they're specifically virtues that I undoubtedly possess, and this qualifies me to pontificate about the world at large to anybody within earshot. Whatever I'm saying or doing must be interesting. Aren’t I great, in other words.

No, I am not. I’m just not. Those assumptions are all bullshit. Even if they're all true, which is debatable, they don’t make me any happier or any more interesting or any more anything than anybody else on the face of the earth. Or at least I like to tell myself that. And it's nobody's business if I do.

Even this self-awareness is tiresome. “Creative types” everywhere can follow their stupid, unspecial dreams as much as they want, but the fact remains that nobody wants to hear about an existential crisis. People have their own existential crises to take care of, and some of them are a little more of the “how am I going to feed my kids this week” kind than your average stupid “how come it’s hard to get my shit together even though I’m so smart?” Especially since the answer is clearly, “because you’re just looking out for yourself, and you don’t feel like you really need an overhead bathroom light all that much, which is totally fine, duh.”

Good point about me, me. I'm not special. I should really just stop writing now. For good.

Whoa. Back off, me. I enjoy writing. That’s the only reason I’m doing it. Back off. Also: I am special. There's a dead guy on TV that still wants me to be his neighbor. So at least I have that.

Man.

Now I want to see what the Voltron team is up to. I still can’t believe Sven died (except I can because in the closing credits the Princess is on his lion and he always talked funny so he’s expendable, but still it was surprising when his blood was running down that sword because it’s like, “Whoa dude, kids show!” And you can tell in Japan it was even more bloody, which would probably be way more awesome. Also: what the fuck is up with the rest of the Voltron force? They didn’t even have a funeral for the guy or change their behavior even one little bit. They were just worried over whether or not the Princess can drive the blue lion. Bullshit. Of course she can drive the blue lion, those things are totally useless against row beasts anyway, and once Voltron forms, how hard could it be to control a leg? It’s a knee and a hip and that’s it. Plus rocketfeet, I guess. But still! It’s not like those other guys had special training to learn how to pilot the lions. They just stumbled into the castle and got their lion starter keys and just went right to it. The Princess lives in that castle, you’re telling me she didn’t take a lion or two out for a spin once in a while? Bullshit. Anyway, I guess if you’re on the Voltron force and you talk funny and your name is Sven, it’s no big deal when you die. It’s a just a shame he died because Pidge is ten times more annoying. I can’t even tell if Pidge is a dude or not. All I know is maybe Pidge can talk to mice. Maybe.)