mindgraffiti

For me, the hardest part about the web is not information overload, but the ability to compare yourself to peers worldwide. While I am only a year out of school, I’m 25 years old and people like Kevin Rose strike a chord in me. While I love the fact that he dresses like an average guy and appears down to earth in interviews and the TWiT podcast, (yeah, yeah, netcast I know!) his ideas are brilliant and make me wonder why I have not achieved a level of success like his. Is it a matter of missing the right opportunities? I’m certainly not lazy.

Sometimes I think he was in the right place at the right time (or was it the wrong place at the wrong time, only right in hindsight?) while other times I think it’s just narcissism encroaching on my thoughts, thanks to the advertising pitch that we are all special and somebody important, and therefore I think I need to be someone important too.

Yet, last week this feeling of Why Haven’t I Achieved Anything? hit uncomfortably closer to home after coming across a featured article written at Vitamin, “Web Design-isms: 7 Surefire Styles that Work,” by Larissa Meek. I took a closer look at the author’s portfolio and background. Whoa. Not only is she close to my age, she grew up not far from me. What is even harder to swallow is how much she has accomplished: a model, an actress, a painter, an entrepreneur, and a web designer? I barely found time to go to school and work full time too, let alone pursue Miss America.

Yet, I have come to realize that is why the Kevin Roses and Larissa Meeks of the world get so much attention: because they do extraordinary things. While I can always hope to achieve Leo Laporte notoriety, I can only excel and achieve at what I find important- and (despite the narcissistic message advertising would have you believe) it might not be something the rest of the world finds important or interesting. That’s okay, I guess. I can accept that I will just have to get over myself. I am not perfect (by miles and miles!) but neither are my peers, and they still shoot for the sky, unafraid.