Everything in Moderation

I've been reading part of my old blog posts lately and have been finding it interesting. I haven't really focused on the big stuff, like our great trips or accomplishments, but more on the little things. The blog posts that have a tranquility to them, where I'm thinking positively and feeling good. 

I choose somewhere in between

It's so easy to fall out of that sense of peace. I easily get caught up in the day to day minutiae of life and like a dripping tap, all those little things get on my nerves. No matter that every day I find a reason to be grateful, the drip drip drip wears down my enthusiasm sometimes. I also have very high expectations of myself. This is a character flaw of the highest order, to be sure and it can be exhausting. I had big dreams for my little blog. I imagined that I'd help people thinking about moving abroad, that I might bring a little amusement into others' days, that I might do some good, but on a grand scale. That isn't to be. I don't have the drive to go out and schmooze with business people, drop broad hints that I'm a popular blogger that might help their businesses or have the acerbic wit that draws so many fans to other sites. At the heart of it, I'm lazy, I just want things to happen organically. (Meaning I don't have to work too hard.) This theory also applies to my novels. I did the heavy lifting writing the things, shouldn't that be enough? But we all know it isn't; that more work needs to be done to become successful and that doesn't even take into consideration that luck that is also required.

So, I've decided that, like everything else in life, moderation is the key. My books are moderately successful, considering the effort I put in to marketing them, my blog is moderately successful in that I've been read in 92 countries and am coming up to 40,000 hits. Not bad for a non-monetized, non-advertised bit of flotsam on the web filled with such things. My diet is moderate, as is my drinking and exercising (more or less) and my social activity falls into the same category. My Spanish is moderately good, and I think that's the most I can hope for, so I'm trying to learn to accept that exceptionalism just isn't for me. Like Popeye says "I am what I am" and that's okay.

Seriously, most of us have to be average...it's the law of, well...averages. I know we all want to be special, to excel at something more than everyone else, but the odds are just against us on this. (It's like trying to beat the stock market...statistically challenging.)  

So here's to average and to moderation. I salute you and I salute all of us that fit in the middle category. Without us, no one else would be amazing.