When I started the American Averagist I thought I had a plan. I was going to find normal Americans in Middle America and tell their stories in a compelling way. But shortly after I started, I began to worry that I may not actually be qualified for the job. My life, my thoughts, and my goals are no more significant than anyone else’s. I’m just an average guy, and when my achievements are compared to others, I’m pretty sure they don’t measure up. Who am I to decide who best represents normal Americans? After thinking about it for a long time though, I’ve decided I may have been missing the point.
I am not writing Averagist stories because of something I’ve achieved. My professional life is still very much in progress, and the meandering paths I have taken so far have often produced mediocre results. But taking an indirect stroll down life’s highway, connecting with other people in meaningful ways, and never arriving at a fixed destination of success may be the best life a person can live. Perhaps being an averagist is embracing life’s journey, finding a couple things you’re good at, and using them to make someone else’s life better in some way. If that’s the case, success is a variable defined by the people we help, using the skills we have, during the life we choose. It all comes down to focusing on your strengths.
When it’s all said and done, I am only naturally good at three things. I like to think I’m a decent writer. I can’t diagram a sentence to save my life, and I violate the rules of grammar so often my third-grade English teacher would probably vomit if she ever read this. But I have managed to become fairly good at weaving a couple words together into something close to a coherent sentence. This is mostly due to literary osmosis.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to understand things I didn’t learn in school, so I read a lot of books. I didn’t know it at the time, but throughout history, people who never excelled in an academic setting became great writers and thinkers by reading everything they could get their hands on. Benjamin Franklin, Mercy Otis Warren, Maya Angelou, and Mark Twain immediately come to mind. I am nowhere near their caliber, and never will be, but the fact that I am writing this today isn’t because I was a great student in high school. It’s because I read the works of incredibly gifted writers. Good readers become good writers. So, writing is my first averagist skill.
I am also pretty good at studying random events and placing them in context. I started developing this skill back in the 1980s, when I was an overly informed but not particularly ambitious kid in high school. During my senior year, I was an aid to the school’s guidance counselors. Most of the time, I didn’t have anything to do so they let me walk across the street to a greasy spoon lunch counter and grab the latest editions of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. I’d bring everything back and we’d talk about the news; nothing profound, just a discussion about events and relevance.
I did this every school day and it became a habit. Over the years, I got to be pretty good at reading a bunch of stuff quickly, discerning what mattered, and communicating my conclusions in a concise way. Later, companies hired me as a consultant to provide independent strategic market analysis that usually ran contrary to their internal reports. I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. It just worked out that way.
These days, having strategic vision sometimes lets me see opportunities where others don’t, recognize potential in people who are overlooked, and find broader meaning in disconnected events. Admittedly, I sometimes miss the mark and draw seriously flawed conclusions. But sometimes I get it right and good things happen. So, thanks to reading newspapers with my guidance counselors in high school, strategic insight is my second averagist skill.
To tell the story of Middle America and discover the best averagists, I must travel, connect the dots in dozens of communities, learn what drives the people forward, and then write the hell out of their stories. That’s what I bring to the table. Hopefully it will make someone’s day better.
Z – Averagist
By the way, in case you were wondering, the third thing I’m naturally good at has no intellectual utility, so I didn’t think it was relevant to the story. But since I brought it up, I didn’t want to leave any loose ends.
I’m pretty good with a handgun. Being able to shoot is probably averagist as well. I’ll have to look into it.
Suck on that Magnum P.I.
When I started the American Averagist I thought I had a plan. I was going to find normal Americans in Middle America and tell their stories in a compelling way. But shortly after I started, I began to worry that I may not actually be qualified for the job. My life, my thoughts, and my goals are no more significant than anyone else’s. I’m just an average guy, and when my achievements are compared to others, I’m pretty sure they don’t measure up. Who am I to decide who best represents normal Americans? After thinking about it for a long time though, I’ve decided I may have been missing the point.
I am not writing Averagist stories because of something I’ve achieved. My professional life is still very much in progress, and the meandering paths I have taken so far have often produced mediocre results. But taking an indirect stroll down life’s highway, connecting with other people in meaningful ways, and never arriving at a fixed destination of success may be the best life a person can live. Perhaps being an averagist is embracing life’s journey, finding a couple things you’re good at, and using them to make someone else’s life better in some way. If that’s the case, success is a variable defined by the people we help, using the skills we have, during the life we choose. It all comes down to focusing on your strengths.
When it’s all said and done, I am only naturally good at three things. I like to think I’m a decent writer. I can’t diagram a sentence to save my life, and I violate the rules of grammar so often my third-grade English teacher would probably vomit if she ever read this. But I have managed to become fairly good at weaving a couple words together into something close to a coherent sentence. This is mostly due to literary osmosis.
When I was a teenager, I wanted to understand things I didn’t learn in school, so I read a lot of books. I didn’t know it at the time, but throughout history, people who never excelled in an academic setting became great writers and thinkers by reading everything they could get their hands on. Benjamin Franklin, Mercy Otis Warren, Maya Angelou, and Mark Twain immediately come to mind. I am nowhere near their caliber, and never will be, but the fact that I am writing this today isn’t because I was a great student in high school. It’s because I read the works of incredibly gifted writers. Good readers become good writers. So, writing is my first averagist skill.
I am also pretty good at studying random events and placing them in context. I started developing this skill back in the 1980s, when I was an overly informed but not particularly ambitious kid in high school. During my senior year, I was an aid to the school’s guidance counselors. Most of the time, I didn’t have anything to do so they let me walk across the street to a greasy spoon lunch counter and grab the latest editions of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. I’d bring everything back and we’d talk about the news; nothing profound, just a discussion about events and relevance.
I did this every school day and it became a habit. Over the years, I got to be pretty good at reading a bunch of stuff quickly, discerning what mattered, and communicating my conclusions in a concise way. Later, companies hired me as a consultant to provide independent strategic market analysis that usually ran contrary to their internal reports. I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. It just worked out that way.
These days, having strategic vision sometimes lets me see opportunities where others don’t, recognize potential in people who are overlooked, and find broader meaning in disconnected events. Admittedly, I sometimes miss the mark and draw seriously flawed conclusions. But sometimes I get it right and good things happen. So, thanks to reading newspapers with my guidance counselors in high school, strategic insight is my second averagist skill.
To tell the story of Middle America and discover the best averagists, I must travel, connect the dots in dozens of communities, learn what drives the people forward, and then write the hell out of their stories. That’s what I bring to the table. Hopefully it will make someone’s day better.
Z – Averagist
By the way, in case you were wondering, the third thing I’m naturally good at has no intellectual utility, so I didn’t think it was relevant to the story. But since I brought it up, I didn’t want to leave any loose ends.
I’m pretty good with a handgun. Being able to shoot is probably averagist as well. I’ll have to look into it.
Suck on that Magnum P.I.