The High Tolerance for Mediocrity

None of us excels at everything we pursue, and it would be absurd to even try.  As if living in the 21st Century isn’t challenging enough, do we really need to beat ourselves up for not being the best at everything, resulting in a high-octane, high-stressed, frazzled existence? No thank you. But goodness, I’m often dumbfounded by people who have no drive to excel in anything. I discussed this with a friend of mine recently at lunch, and he concluded that some people just have a high tolerance for mediocrity.

And look, I could be accused of the same when it comes to working out, cooking, lawncare, crossword puzzles, tennis, fashion, travel planning, home maintenance, guitar, religion and – as if this needed pointing out – blog composition. But for a few areas in my life, I really do try to be the best I can be, to overprepare and knock the ball out of the park. Where I’ve fallen into trouble is when my lack of tolerance for mediocrity isn’t aligned with someone else’s.

As a musician, I’ve often assumed that fellow band members would want to play to the best of their abilities and work hard to nail down a song. This isn’t always the case. In fact, more often than not, it’s not the case. For some people, just being in a band is the goal, and playing something well enough is, well…enough. This isn’t a crime. It’s okay to play okay in an okay band. It just isn’t for me, and it took me many years to recognize when I was walking into a situation where people’s expectations didn’t align with mine. Honestly, I’m still not sure I’ve figured it out.

But I do think that everyone should try to be good at something. That doesn’t mean being the best or being dejected when a goal isn’t achieved – it just means working hard to obtain something and taking pleasure and pride in that pursuit. If playing an instrument is “your thing,” then strive to play it well, or as well as you can. If running is your thing, set some goals for distances and times and work to obtain them. If cooking is your thing, attempt a new recipe that expands your skillset.

I once wrote the following lyric:

The truth be told, my friend
There lies a noble end
But it’s a million miles away
From where you’ve been
You’ve been on cruise control
Without a lofty goal
And every day begins and ends
And ends where it begins

I wrote these words in 2002 ostensibly about a friend of mine who had hit hard times and seemed to be sleepwalking through life (the song, “Grounded,” would eventually appear on my 2007 album, Pause). But as with a lot of my lyrics, the words were – in retrospect – aimed squarely at me, or a future version of me, when I wasn’t living life as fully as I could be. Now, when I have a day or days or weeks when I’m not doing much of anything purposeful, I recall this song and remind myself to kick things into gear.

I believe
There is something grand you’re ready to achieve
It’s not so out of reach
After all
There are lesser souls than you to heed the call

None of us can hit the mark all of the time. But what kind of lives are we living if we don’t even try to hit it some of the time?

Expressing Love

One of my daughters got married last weekend on a lovely, sunny day in Louisville, and it was a joyous, celebratory affair. I couldn’t be more delighted with the weekend in general and the ceremony in particular, where it was impossible not to take note of just how well my daughter and her husband articulated their love for each other. Their vows were incredible, describing feelings that I would be hard-pressed to come up with if I were asked why I love my wife of thirty years. We exchanged vows back in 1995, but I’ll be darned if I can remember them now, and I’m pretty she we didn’t even write them. I think we found them in a wedding book somewhere, maybe taking lines from various readings to compile a sort of “greatest hits,” in stark contrast to the personalized masterpieces I heard last weekend.

Even today, while my wife and I say “I love you” regularly, neither of us are all that well-versed in communicating affection. Our relationship is still wonderful and we’re madly in love with each other, but on an average day, the most loving thing I might hear from my wife is “I like your butt.” And honestly, as I ceaselessly approach age 60, I’ll take it!

I think of the characters Tevya and Golde from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. When Tevya asks his wife, “Do you love me?” she responds with a degree of surprise and indignation, “Do I WHAT?” She then gives a laundry list of all the chores she’s done for her husband for the past twenty-five years, before finally concluding by the song’s end, “I suppose I do.” Tevya must have swooned upon hearing that touching line!

My wife and I aren’t that bad, but the reality is that we both came from somewhat emotionally repressed families. Not bad families, but not overly demonstrative. Grudges were had. Silent treatments were plentiful. Distances were built. It was tricky, and for a guy like me who wasn’t overly confident to begin with, navigating the world of dating where articulating affection and tenderness were prerequisites, well, let’s just say my track record wasn’t stellar.

After I met my future wife, saying “I love you” and showing tenderness came more easily, but it was limited to her and her only (and eventually my children). It took many, many years before I felt somewhat comfortable hugging friends. It’s still not my favorite way of saying hello. My father and I haven’t hugged since the 1970s. My brother and I have never hugged. We shake hands. It’s ridiculous, but such is the legacy of our upbringings.

Watching my daughter last weekend – and observing my other two children show their joy and kindness – I get the sense that generation by generation our family is slowly but surely shedding the residue of our stern, German heritage, and embracing something more welcoming, more understanding, more loving and more supportive. I feel like my wife and I took baby steps in that direction, and now our children are taking that baton and running with it to a whole new level of open communication.

Acting as Badly as Billionaires

After the end of the supposed decade of greed of the 1980s, Cy Curnin of the band The Fixx sang the following lines:

How much is enough when your soul is empty?
How much is enough in the land of plenty?
When you have all you want and you still feel nothing
How much is enough, is enough?

How much is enough?
Buy, buy, buy
Buy, buy, buy

We're drowning in possessions

If Cy had only known then how things would evolve over the next 35 years, as income inequality proved ever-widening, he and his bandmates might have waited to release the song.

Those with obscene amounts of money are wielding unprecedented power in the United States, and it’s easy to be disheartened by the lack of compassion and the massive consumption of the uber-wealthy today. I think actor Jesse Eisenberg said it best when he appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher in January of 2025 and had this to say about tech billionaires and politics:

”If you’re so rich and powerful, why are you not just spending your days doing good things for the world?”

Good question. And while it’s tempting to hop on that bandwagon and lambast Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and the like, it might also be time to look in the mirror and question our own motives in life, because from where I’m standing, there’s a lot of “amass as much wealth as you can, retire and live out your days in a gated community somewhere” mentality.

It’s true for some relatives of mine. It’s true for many friends of mine. And if I’m being honest, it’s true for me and my family. I spend a lot of time watching financial videos by Rob Berger on YouTube, reading articles on Investopedia and Motley Fool, updating spreadsheets and forecasting when my wife can retire. It’s not like this is foolish behavior – financial literacy and planning are important – but what exactly is the goal here? When the world appears to be headed for irreversible disaster, am I just hoping to ride off into the sunset and escape from reality?

The antidote for this type of mentality – whether you’re a billionaire or otherwise – is to get involved. Find a cause or causes that you feel strongly about, and start contributing, not just financially, but with your time. I was teaching English for a few years, and since that petered out a year ago I’ve made a few modest attempts to find something new to contribute to, but so far those have gone nowhere. One of the sad truths in life is that non-profits aren’t always well-organized and often lead to wasted time and dead ends. But when that happens, it isn’t time to give up on volunteering; it’s time to find a different non-profit.

Volunteering boosts one’s outlook on life, creates social connections with like-minded people, leads you out of the bubble you’ve been living in, and makes a difference in the lives of people or the lives of plants and animals. Those differences might be small, but that’s okay. If you’ve ever been in need of a little help, you know how important small acts of kindness can be.

So don’t follow the blueprint of billionaires. Don’t look at life as a way to accumulate wealth and ride out the rest of your lives in a bubble. Get involved.

Low-Stakes Home Improvement

Spring is upon us (sort of), and that’s the time of year when I look around my house to see if anything needs improving. Sure, I could always paint a room, but that’s tedious and unfulfilling. No, for me it’s all about tackling low-stakes home improvement projects that require planning, a degree of ingenuity, power tools, and significant time. Little in life gives me more pleasure. A project that’s low-stakes is key. I’ve done some high-stakes projects as well, and those lead to stress, second-guessing, and safety concerns, but low-stakes projects are like a walk through the park on a mild day. Last summer I built shelving for my kitchen pantry, and that was perfect. There was no chance of my losing a digit and there was no significant risk, save for a shelf of canned goods collapsing.

This particular project probably only took me a day to execute, but it was the planning that took a week or more. I thought about it from every angle, measured and remeasured, watched videos on something called a pocket jig (who knew?), purchased said jig at Menard’s and perused shelving possibilities (Natural wood? Primed? Coated? Size?), read up on how best to anchor the sideboard into a wall that lacked properly-aligned studs...in short, I overplanned, but by the time it came to execution, well, I was ready.

And for me, planning is absolutely necessary, because I have no natural ability and have had no schooling of any kind except The Home Depot Home Improvement 1-2-3 book that my brother-in-law purchased for me back in 1997 when my wife and I moved into our first home. This was a game-changer. After all, I had never heard the words “home” and “improvement” in the same sentence in my childhood home. Sure, my mother could strip furniture and throw on coats of stain and varnish, but the only time I recall my father trying to fix something, it resulted in blood and lots of swear words, so I knew to stay clear of tools and manual projects.

When I purchased a house, I noticed all sorts of things that needed fixing, but I knew nothing. I mean, NOTHING. How do you swap out an electric outlet? No clue. How do you strip wallpaper? No clue. How do you take out a carpet and tack strips? No clue. My wife had married a man who was about as handy as screen door on a submarine.

But I was curious, I was motivated, and I wasn’t afraid to ask questions and try things. Back in these days before YouTube, it was my friend Rick who saved the day, sending me long, detailed emails that walked me through various tasks.  What he sometimes failed to realize was that I didn’t even know how to use a tool properly. I recall the first time I made a cut with a circular saw as part of a project to build my own music rackmount box: my hands were shaking, I was so terrified, sure that I was about to lose a finger or an eye. Today, I have to remind myself to wear eye protection when making a cut. I’ve come a long way.

Since then I’ve tackled all sorts of projects, including some that make me shudder today, as in “That was kind of crazy – I’m not going to do THAT again.” I’m no longer willing to do those. But projects like adding stairway railings or building record racks or installing pantry shelves? You betcha.

Say it with me: low stakes.

So I’m going to spend the next several months ascertaining which project to accomplish, a few more months planning said project, and by the fall I might be ready to put the plan into action!

Life Without Amazon

Comedian Marc Maron has a bit on his latest HBO special where he laments how little we as consumers can do to limit the power of big companies like Amazon. In it, he imagines Jeff Bezos cruising on his $100 million yacht, tracking the number of subscribers to Amazon Prime, and saying, “Looks like we lost one.”

It can often feel as if we’re powerless, but as with so many things in life – being kind, giving to charity, supporting local political movements, disposing our toxic waste properly – it’s important to live according to one’s values. It boosts our sense of self, it provides a model for our children, and it potentially moves the needle of society in some small way.

My wife and I had been saying for over a year that we should really ditch our subscription to Amazon Prime, not because it isn’t a good deal – it is – but because we don’t really want to support powerful companies anymore if they can be avoided. After all, I cancelled my Spotify subscription last year without regret, and I wondered if life without Amazon would be equally unproblematic. There are a lot of online articles you can research about how to shop without Amazon, but I decided I wasn’t going to bother – just go in and get ‘er done.

So we pulled the plug to our Prime membership a few months ago, and you know what? So far it hasn’t been a big deal at all. I’ve had to search a little harder for some items, but I ultimately found what I needed, and sometimes at lower costs than I would have paid on Amazon.  Here are a few examples:

Audio cables: I tried Best Buy, Crutchfield and Audio Advisor, but none offered what I was looking for. But then a search led me to Sweetwater, where I’ve often purchased recording equipment. Turns out they provide some home audio accessories for the same cost as Amazon, with free shipping and quick delivery. Perfect.

Soap dispensers: we were unhappy with the ones we purchased at Target a few years back and wanted something that would last a while. We opted to go to a local retail store called Uncharted, which now has around ten stores nationwide. It’s a fun place to browse – exactly the kind of brick-and-mortar store we want to support.

Two healthcare items to help with my arthritis: this was trickier. Ultimately, I saved about $20 by not purchasing them on Amazon and instead ordering from Walmart. Now, Walmart is not exactly a local mom and pop store, but it’s still less than half the size of Amazon. Not a perfect solution, but it got the job done in a pinch. This example shows the limitations of trying to avoid behemoths.

Books: there’s been a lot of buzz about the resurgence of Barnes and Noble, which has reimagined its business philosophy and is adding dozens of physical stores. It’s funny how what was once considered the “Big, Bad Bookstore” is now considered an underdog. Still, I haven’t had a great deal of success finding what I want at Barnes and Nobel. Instead, I’ve went the used route, purchasing second-hand books through eBay, often from charitable organizations. There’s also a great local used bookstore a few miles from my house that I try from time to time. They don’t always have what I’m looking for, but sometimes they come through.

My experiment of life without Amazon has only gone on for a few months so far, but I already think it will last. If needed, I can imagine paying one month of Prime during the holiday season when we’re making a lot of purchases and sending them out of state, but I’m hoping we can even avoid this compromise. Give it a shot! We lived without Amazon before the late 90s, and we can do it again. Maybe when Bezos sees tens of thousands of people unsubscribing from Prime, he’ll start to pay attention.