Stereotypes.

For most of my young life, I revelled in their existence. I was comforted by their predictability. By the very fact that if in the world I experienced there was nothing I could really relate to, I could at least relate the things and people I saw to the stereotypes that I felt ultimately defined them. I was fascinated by the way in which I felt people fell into broad, definitive strokes. I was mesmerised by the way you could relate people to the cliques that they always seemed to be cultivating. I was enthralled by the way I could limit the effects of somthing I hated on my own mentality, robbing it of it’s venom by relating it to a pointless, stupid, misguided goal. I guess at that point, it was easy because I didn’t have any awareness of my own clique, because I didn’t know anyone like me. I was living in this blameless, untouchable point of peerless judgement.

Like most young adults I looked at the people around me and thought in terms of popularity, intelligence, social capability, confidence, but I was never able to define any of those traits in myself in a way that I felt at the time was in any way truly definitive. I never saw anything in anyone else that truly reflected what I felt in myself, because no matter how hard I tried, such definition was beyond my capabilities to concentrate. Nothing seemed important, only passingly interesting.

So, once I grew old and experienced and respected enough to manage to begin to place myself in society, something happened. Something bad. I lost my ability ot ignore my own culpability. Everything I did seemed hokey, or predictable. I turned that expectation of limitation onto myself. I became just another subject of an artificial stereotype. Just one more person meaninglessly scrabbling to push himself to the forefront of his clique.

I’m a mid-twentysomething hipster online digital media intelligensia fadamaniac internet bloganista douche. I talk about things like "intuitive design" and "functional intent" the way other more straight forward assholes talk about Sports.  I revel in conversations about Web 3.0 and give the impression I know what all the blogs are saying. About everything. All the time.

So, this would be fine. But the problem is that a couple of years ago, I started being able to see where I fell into predictable traps of mediocrity, of choosing to parrot the words of the "cutting edge status quo" because I knew that to a large amount of other people, this sterotype was socially acceptable and I took this opportunity to make myself finally feel like I belonged somewhere . It would make me happy to see people respect me for my ability to articulate things, but the problem is that no-one seemed to notice that none of the ideas were mine. I was simply reporting the creativity of others. I became a reflection of other people. The funny thing is that I work in what is theoretically one of the most creative fields around and to me that the concept of true creativity has become the glass of water to a man dying in the dunes of the Ghobi.

I used to write. Here mostly, but I was completely enthralled by writing. Anywhere. I filled books with my twitterings. My writing examined the structures of belief, need, desire, hope, pain that permeated my life at the time. It charted the development of ideas, the rights and the wrongs of every kind of social contract. Of course most of it was bullshit but I didn’t know that then. I was writing and I loved it.

This is pretty much the first thing that’s lasted more than two sentences I’ve written in two years. Because every single time I try, I feel like the inside of my entire body is covered in an undulating sheen of shit that’s raping the moisture out of my life. The stereotypes I once prized have now begun to constrict around me, making me scared, prematurely middleaged and ultimately destined for mediocrity. I need to connect with my ability to create or else I might as well accept my fate and move to the back of the line so that someone else can have a go.

So. In the words of the American President, Calvin Coolidge

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, ‘Press on,’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."