on the virtues of a mediocre life

teenagers really are sh*theads, aren't they?

I had a good relationship with my AP U.S. History teacher, Mr. Melvin, during my junior year of high school. I used to pop into his room for the occasional tête-à-tête during lunch. He had taken a liking to me, mostly because he thought I was smart. I thought so, too—in fact, like most 16-year-olds, I thought I had the world already figured out.

Still, there were a lot of things I wanted out of life then and I had yet to clearly form or define what my future would look like (nothing has changed). It was a form of therapy for me before therapy became an acceptable activity for a teenager.

One day I came across a story on Reddit about a man who had started his first job as a grocery store bagger in his youth. He diligently worked his way up to store manager over the course of his career. It was a stable job and he had the respect of his coworkers, so he never thought to question it, but by the time he reached retirement he realized he had spent the last four decades in a grocery store. He regretted never taking a leap of faith and trying something different.

At the time, this story scared me sh*tless. It had such a lasting impression on me that for the next few years, whenever someone would ask me what my greatest fear was, I would respond, predictably and with a grave and steadfast seriousness:

"Living a mediocre life."

This was also around the same time that I had discovered the concept of a "bucket list". I soon made it my mission to avoid what I referred to as "grocery-boy-syndrome" and carefully crafted a spreadsheet of every experience, accolade, and milestone I wanted to pursue after graduation. This was 2009, and over the next decade I crossed off as many entries as possible with a dutiful rigor.

(my list, last updated in 2018)

I marched into Mr. Melvin's classroom on my next break and proudly presented a printed copy of my list. He looked at it carefully (in retrospect, he probably thought I had lost it), and when I explained my grand plan, he took a beat. Gave me a long look. And then:

"You know, there's nothing wrong with a mediocre life."

I stared dumbly in return, horrified. The man in front of me was a high school history teacher, newly married with a son and comfortably settled in conventional suburbia. What could he possibly know about living an exceptional life?

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪

When I was little and still living on the East Coast, I remember having a deep fascination with fireflies. It's one of the things I missed the most when I moved to California: watching their fluttering, ephemeral dance, dotting the backyard with radiating flickers of light. Seeing them come alive, one-by-one, at the first sign of sundown made summer evenings feel almost transcendent.

I'd often carry out an old mason jar from the kitchen and wait until one floated inside. Then I'd screw on the lid, run upstairs, and display in proudly on my nightstand. I'd watch it roam around the glass walls, looking for an escape and occasionally releasing a single, sad, puff of light. I was always disappointed with the resulting effect, and would promptly forget about it until it died a few hours later.

I tried this same routine with different variations—poking holes in the lid for air, adding slivers of bladed grass—but I was never able to replicate the joy, the wonder, of running through a field of fireflies in the warm summer air.

One of the interesting parts about bucket lists, or goals in general, is that semantics matter. A lot. You have to design each entry with careful intention, shoehorning the emotion, vigor, and joy of a victory into a short string of words. Trying to predict and capture a life-changing moment into something simple and understandable is a difficult (if not, impossible) task. You don't simply stake a claim at the top of Mount Everest and call it a life well-lived. But as every parent will tell you, trying to get a high schooler to understand subtlety or nuance is a losing battle.

I never “earned a black belt in martial arts”, but I've spent the last 5 years dedicated to learning a rankless combat sport.

I'm not “fluent in Spanish”, but I guided Alby and I around Mexico City with confidence and ease.

I didn't “ride a boat down the Li River”, but I watched the sunrise over it from the top of a mountain.

Did any of that count? And what about all the stupid, wonderful, weird adventures that I didn't have the foresight to log before they happened? Do I add them after-the-fact? Is that cheating? Do they count as a part of the "story"?

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It turns out that living a life defined by lists or rules can become its own prison. There were so many times over the course of my early 20s that I no longer valued some of these experiences, but I persisted because it was "the plan". I sometimes even altered itineraries or career paths just so I could properly check-off another entry. Without knowing it, I had pigeonholed my life to meet the expectations of a version of myself I had already grown out of.

This didn't become obvious to me until this summer, after I decided to leave NYC for good. The part of me that thought I was cooler, better, superior, for fighting to survive in the "best city in the world" had slowly faded without me noticing. It took months before I finally let go. And when I did, everything felt like it was finally falling into place.

Alby and I talked briefly about our Plan B: moving to Bangkok and touring Asia while training Muay Thai full-time. It sounded great in theory. Living abroad was a final bucket list experience that had outlasted my early adulthood years (because studying for a semester in Paris and taking a year-long sabbatical to visit 30 countries wasn't enough to qualify somehow). I had built up my identity as an "NYC person" and a "travel person", and if I couldn't have one, I'd at least have the other.

Living abroad! Traveling full time! Seeing the world again!

I waited for the excitement to come, but it never did. If I was honest, it sounded exhausting. For the first time in my life I had no desire to get on a plane. I didn't even want to live in a city. I just wanted a home, a community, and time to sharpen my craft.

How could I be "special" if I wasn't living in a cool city and traveling all the time? What goals and experiences would take shape in that vacuum? What do you do when you no longer have a plan for your life?

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I stopped updating my bucket list in 2018. There were a few items I got to, naturally, later on. Not because I had memorized the spreadsheet (although, knowing me, I'm surprised "develop photographic memory" didn't make the cut), but because I intuitively knew what was important to me. I took my mom on vacation to Russia, moved to my dream city, started working for myself, and am now engaged to the love of my life. Earlier this week, we drove up to Chico to pick up our first puppy together, which will also be the first pet I've owned that wasn't shared among family.

So much of our early life is defined not by how we want to live, but by how we want to be seen. And so much of what has made my life meaningful wasn't something I could predict or comprehend fifteen years ago. Some of us realize this before it's too late, but most never do. Turns out Mr. Melvin was right after all.

I'm no longer afraid of being mediocre—mostly because it's not even a word I still care to use—but also because I'm 31 now, and I've lived long enough to realize that trying to outclass the people around you by prioritizing a life that looks good on paper is just a different cut of the same cloth. It's the intention that matters. And no matter how it all takes shape, there's nothing average about moving through life with eyes wide open.

Always,

Wes