It's Always More Complicated

Thinking further about that article I linked yesterday apropos of the virtues of "deliberate mediocrity" as a strategy for beating perfectionism and related issues because of various other stuff coming up.

While no or too low expectations may indeed be a bad thing, high expectations can be pretty awful as well. Looking back I am perhaps glad that my background was such that just getting into university, any university, and getting a reasonably good degree was pretty yayful (even if the institution I attended now occasionally emerges as the butt of mockery). (And quite stressful enough, thanks.)

Returning in later years to do a PhD part-time, there are significant props involved just for staying the course and submitting a thesis (and unlike certain people who got postdoctoral fellowships to turn theirs into publication/s that never happened - wot, me, bitter? - publishing The Book of the Thesis).

I think also of Boring Old Fart whom I may have mentioned in previous posts, who started out as Golden Boy of Outstanding Promise and never really did anything much at all in terms of fulfilling that promise, which may well have been down to the burdens of being expected to be utterly brilliant and making groundbreaking contributions to the discipline, etc. Or just having peaked early and then slumped.

I may also have mentioned heretofore the benefical strategy of concentrating on one's specific strengths to the extent that people do not notice the things one is not doing.

I wouldn't deny that I had significant support enabling me to do the things I've done, but I didn't have people gazing at me expecting me to Do Something Remarkable, which must be fairly paralyzing.

Thanks to everybody who responded to the 'should hedjog transmogrify into Mr Toad vroom-vroom parp-parp' post yesterday: these replies are still giving me food for thought.

Have also been thinking further about whether actual skills, of whatever kind, are essential to adulthood, or whether it is really more of a state of mind and an approach to life and a set of qualities.

Skills tend to be very much contextual and essential aptitudes for one situation may be completely irrelevant in another.

Also, even for fairly basic things like providing for oneself and managing one's finances or other resources, there are innumerable personal and idiosyncratic ways of going about these essentials which work for the person in question.

I can see that there are various things associated with being an adult, like responsibility, and being able to prioritise responsibilities .

There are also times when I wonder whether adulthood is in fact a performative act...