Natural Talent

My constant attempts to demote myself at work are nothing fundamentally new, but just the most recent of several manifestations of a certain issue, what a behavioural psychologist would call the "acting out" of my guilt. You know, for being me. One minute I am saving the day for some CEO I have never met in some other country, and the next I am eyeing the janitor's mop and thinking that certainly I could do the floor much more efficiently than she could, perhaps a little switcheroo at the right time would be the best thing for the company (translation: best thing for me). I never think or feel I deserve the limelight; most of the time, receding into the darkness of anonymity is a much more appealing idea to my neurotic self than stepping out onto a podium to receive whatever award it is that I have won now.

Shouldn't effort be rewarded, not natural talent? Recognize the piano player who has spent decades mastering a song, not the player who sat down one afternoon and just started playing it. Secretly I am in love with most naturals of history through some form of displaced narcissism. I project my feelings of self-pride onto them, love them for it, and leave myself only with the guilt for being born the way I was born. Two things I have never been able to do well are playing Quake CTF multiplayer and axe-kicking higher than my head. The rest seems to come naturally.

Thankfully money does not interest me and never has. I would rather go back to less pay and more privacy; I'll hide myself from the world, that's what I'll do. The world wants me, but I don't want the world. "Why are you working here, Hooper? You could do anything, you could have anything?" Fortunately I don't want anything. I want a key to the rooftop of my apartment building so at 2:00am in the morning when the door is locked I can sneak up there and watch the storms rolling in over the lake with Beethoven still vibrating in my fingertips.

- Thursday, August 23, 2007