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"There was no need to ask him how he'd done. He looked gray...'Smack in the middle of the class,' he said. Bs of some kind, that meant. Aubrey had worked doggedly first term, unafraid of confessing his ambitions. He wanted the most selective firm, the highest salary, the Review. I felt he deserved better for his honesty...I walked Aubrey back to his locker. Willie Hewitt came by, bragging about two Bs. 'Not bad for a screw-off, huh?' he asked me as he passed. Aubrey seemed to wince. He stared into his empty locker. 'I'm so tired of being competent,' he said suddenly. 'I've been competent all my life. I wish I could be either the best or the worst. This is just so goddamn dull.' He shook his head a laughed a little."
-Scott Turow from One L

Of all the things I read in high school it is this passage from some obscure book that seems to stick with me, and creep up when I am feeling small.

I got out of the shower tonight all worked up; pissed as hell and wanting to scream. Or at least cry. Neither came to fruition. I wanted to rant and rave about stripping away all the inhibition and just telling everyone how I felt. I wanted clarify how enraged and disappointed I am in my education. I wanted to be sick over all the little things, like money and accolades. I wanted to layout my general disappointment in all things, and tell people to just stop whining; the money is spent and your way is not the way it is. It's his way...
But now, after finding that passage, I just want to go to bed...I have gone through it all in head a half-dozen times, and it doesn't change anything to bitch about it. No one is going to care or be as hurt as I was at thought of making a great office manager.

There is the world we perceive and then there is the world...just the world as it is. We all live in a world of delusion to some degree. I wanted so badly to belong to greatness...to stand out and above...I have tried genuinely hard to get there...but the more the veil is lifted the more I see I'm bound for the masses of mediocrity, and I think that is what is making me physically, literally, ill.