Continued from Part 1…
After days spent in deep thought trying to figure out what my greatest fear was, it finally dawned on me that I am more afraid of being average than any other thing in this world. I fear it more than death, more than snakes, more than spiders, more than anything else.
I’m sure you’re wondering how I came to this conclusion; it was quite easy actually. All I had to do was examine the actions and decisions I’ve made in my life and a clear trend began to form. As I kid I was naive enough or maybe dumb enough, you decide, to listen to my mom’s rants about me being oh so special, one of a kind, and meant for great things and actually believe them in my heart to be true statements (sorry kids all moms lie, you’re not special either).
I remember the first time I started doing arts and crafts in day care, what’d I do?, naturally I started finding rocks and gluing as much shiny shit to them as I could (enough glitter to choke Tinkerbell) and went door to door trying to sell them, friends in tow. When I first started getting semi-decent with my drawings (from stick figures to horribly disfigured blocks) I started drawing my own little comic books and started soliciting to the neighbors (they loved me oh so much). In 2nd grade I brought out my inner Denzel in my first class play, which was played out to the song “Hair” by The Cowsills, and proceeded to make my own plays along with my cousins, a handful of stuffed animals, and poorly constructed sets, in order to put on my own shows for my family and any unsuspecting guests; the soundtrack to every play – “Hair.” In middle school I went to Six Flags-Magic Mountain for the first time and afterwards proceeded to draw up my own blueprint for a theme park of my own imagining, freakish bald mascots excluded. Growing up I juggled a multitude of different sports (basketball, football, track, baseball) and devoted countless hours to each always trying to be “the” best. Heading into high school I had one of the toughest choices I’ve ever had to make; who to live with, my mom or my dad? My mom had just moved back stateside and my dad was heading back to Colorado, I was getting pulled from both directions. In the end I chose to live with my dad, not because I loved him more (I love them both equally), but because I knew it was the best choice for my future in sports. It was a tough choice to say the least. And now I’ve already sunk countless hours into this “social media” experience, even going as far as blowing off college Saturday nights in order to devise new posts, tragic I know; and as always pulling my friends in with me, in an attempt to build a brand of our own.
Ask me a week ago why I did all of these things I would’ve just blown it off and probably said something inane like that’s just the way I am. But that’s not the real reason and I knew it wasn’t (just never knew what was); the real reason was why I blow off opportunities to “go out” in order to work on this blog, why I spend an insane amount of hours in the gym working on my game, why I have so many sleepless nights just sitting up thinking, and why I’m writing this post at God knows what hour when I should be sleeping. The real reason was fear, the fear of being average…
For this post I chose “Human Nature” by the late, great Michael Jackson for three reasons: 1) He’s awesome 2) The song is fitting 3) A six-year-old girl sang “Beat It” word for word today at work. Legends never die. #LLF. I’m not posting any links to find out anymore about him, if you don’t know who he is life will only get harder.
Bonus Track – “Hair” by the Cowsills (still know the words…weird)
