Stop Telling Me I'm Amazing. I Know.

When was the last time someone came up to you and launched into a glowing report on how smart / talented / wonderful you are, and you preemptively cut them off with two words:

"I know."

I'm pretty sure your answer is "never," because doing so is considered rude, ungrateful, egotistical or any other personality trait we apply to celebrities who've lost touch with "who they are" and "where they come from." (Evidently, remembering "where you come from" implies that you should never admit that you aren't there anymore.)

Instead, conventional wisdom mandates that such exchanges must always proceed as follows:

Fan: "You're amazing!"

Hero: "Shucks. No I'm not..."

Fan: "Yes you SO are! And here's why!" [produces voluminous list of rationales]

Hero: "Well, if you say so..." [smiles sheepishly and stares at his own $4,000 shoes]

Such interactions imply that having enough confidence in your own work that you don't need to pretend to be validated by the words of others is somehow a character flaw.

But why?

Because the fan must also feel validated by the hero.

The Inverse Value Proposition of Being a Fan

In the eyes of the fan, the hero already appears to have everything. The hero is getting paid to do something that the fan considers to be a dream job, and by definition, having a dream job means that the possessor of said job would naturally be forever thankful. (After all, if the fan were in his hero's shoes, he'd be thankful.)

Conversely, if the hero no longer appears to be thankful for external validation, that means the hero has "changed," and it now becomes the job of the "fan" to instead tell the hero that he sucks. This is because the fan must feel as though his outreach to the hero is justified by imparting information on him that the hero would never otherwise know (or at least admit to).

All of which means that the rules of modern interaction were obviously written by fans who made the mistake of approaching too many heroes who were confident enough in their own abilities to not realize they needed "others" to validate them. (This makes sense, because their heroes were too busy doing heroic things to bother deciding how they should feel about them; that job fell to the fans, who had a lot of free time on their hands.)

I'd Like to Forget All the Little People

The bizarre lesson being taught here is that being confident enough in our own abilities to not constantly require external validation is somehow wrong. It's not. Not that you'd know that from the hyper-self-fascinated world of social media, where every view / follower / comment is analyzed to ensure maximum validation for the recipient, but it's true:

It's okay to be confident in yourself.

You don't have to be a douche about it, but you're certainly welcome to admit to yourself -- and, yes, to others -- that you are good at what you do, that you do stand out from the crowd and that you really did expect to succeed all along.

And if you're so good that you can be a douche about it and still remain at the top of your game, let's be honest: there's only so much time in the day, and sometimes douchebaggery is the finer part of brevity. So accept the obligatory applause, walk away, and get back to being a hero.

Because if you're good enough at being a hero, the fans will write your legend for you... whether you want them to or not.

Image by Our Hero.

Obama Won't Get You Laid

Now that the afterglow of an Obama election victory has worn off (because in these days of 24-hour news cycles, no emotion lasts for long), the question is this:

"Now what?"

While most of the world waits breathlessly to see whom Obama appoints to his cabinet, what kind of dog his kids will choose for a new pet and which brand of toilet paper he prefers in his executive suite, I'd like to turn your gaze away from the nonstop media roar and toward your nearest reflective surface and ask, again:

"Now what?"

Barack Obama will do some great things while he's in office. He'll also do some incredibly stupid things. He'll make choices that will endear him to some and piss off others, and he'll be involved in matters and actions both great and small.

But one thing he won't do is get you laid.

Because electing Barack Obama is no longer anyone's passion -- he's already elected. Now what do you do with all of the energy and effort that was catalyzed to help this moment occur? What do you do with all of your passion, your newfound interest in politics and your increased awareness of the needs and wants of the world?

What do YOU do?

Because Barack Obama's a busy man. Sure, he's appreciative of all the work you did on his behalf, and he'll do his best to reward you by governing as fairly as his conscience dictates. But he doesn't have much time to return the favor directly, by helping YOU achieve YOUR next goal -- you know, that one on your to-do list, right below the now-scratched-out entry that says "Get My Free Starbucks."

So...

What do you WANT to do?

What do you NEED to do?

Go do it.

Because history will judge Barack Obama, but history's a long way off. In the meantime, you have bills to pay, relationships to tend to, and your own goals to achieve.

And now, after 2 years of wondering, waiting, hoping and working your ass off to help your candidate get elected, it's time to turn that energy back on your own life and solve your own problems. Overcome your own challenges. Move your own mountains.

Because America's first black president is an amazing story, but you've got a story of your own.

Start living it.

"Too Much Stability Means We're Not Trying Hard Enough"

I just typed that sentence in an iChat conversation, and it suddenly seemed far more applicable than just in the context it was intended.

So often, it seems like I (and everyone else I know) is striving to reach equilibrium. We want a day where we can "just relax." We want all the bills to be paid, the work to be done and the hard questions to be answered. (Hell, we even strive to ensure our Twitter friends are numbered the same as our followers.)

We want stability.

Fortunately, we rarely have it. Because when we do, a funny thing happens: we get complacent. And last time I checked, it was necessity, not complacency, that was the mother of invention.

Embrace Your Broken Pieces

I'm in the worst financial shape of my life.

I'm in relatively good shape health-wise. I have a good group of friends. I have a supportive family. I have a girlfriend who loves me despite my regularly asinine behavior. And I have this web series that continues to grow in all directions.

If I weren't embarrassingly broke, I'd be bored off my ass. Because being broke means I need to bust my ass and get as much done as possible to create new solutions to this problem.

I could say the same thing if I were ill, or lonely, or single, or working a job
I despised -- and I've been in each of those situations before. But the same methodology would still apply: my need to improve upon an existing trouble is the motivation that will lead me to new creative, social, economic and experiential endeavors.

I won't be able to solve my problems sitting at home. Or working alone. Or making the minimum possible effort and being otherwise content with my unsatisfying present situation.

Instead, I'll be inventing all kinds of harebrained schemes. I'll be taking risks and pushing myself to the edge. I'll be meeting people I never would have cause to talk to if I didn't need to track them down. And I'll be learning more about myself, and this wonderful world we live in, through my response to adversity than I ever would learn by waking up every day in a state of absolute contentment.

It may not be pretty, and it may not be the most zen-like approach to life, but it's what I have right now. And that's exciting.

It's our broken pieces that set us free.