Embracing Your Unoriginality

There’s a spectrum to self-awareness. On one end, you’ll likely find a straw man of whoever stands at the other end of your personal politics—a two dimensional creature that spouts nonsense that you stand prepared to objectively refute. In the center of this spectrum is the top of the bell curve, and a rather healthy mix of understanding and sincerity.

But there’s an opposite extreme. Something buried in several layers of self-destruction and self-aggrandizement all culminated in hours of anxious hysteria, nicotine, and misappropriated Father John Misty lyrics. If you find yourself curious to discover life on this end of the spectrum, I highly recommend working from home.

Last year saw me giving up my camaraderie of high schoolers and college kids at my part-time job to work towards something I was convinced that I wanted. I saw the internet as a wild-west of opportunity and possibility, and was deluded by articles and listicles alike into thinking freedom meant self-employment. That my misanthropic nature would love this alternative.

But I didn’t plan correctly.

I jumped headfirst into an industry without realizing the implications. I mistook my introverted nature and assumed that I could sustain myself on too many carbs and a lack of human interaction. I became an isolated system.

Eventually the lines between reality and the Internet blurred. I was clocking in well over eight hours of my life online every day. Distant friends and few responsibilities exacerbated by ability to become reclusive. And so I found myself fair-weather friends with the Internet.

If you’ve spent enough time online, you’ll find a similar spectrum to one of self-awareness. Or, the lack thereof.
“And now the future’s definition is so much higher than it was last year,
It’s like the images have all become real,
And someone’s living my life for me out in the mirror”
– Josh Tillman, Father John Misty

Social spaces online are one part genuine content and nine parts ignorant, dense technobabble. And it’ll only get worse. The more I stared at it, the more I felt like I was looking into an indiscernible void. My mind tried to codify the deluge of information into some strange math equation:

You’ve got one side of the equation convinced in a strange pseudo-reality that requires constant labels, demeaning and tone-deaf echo chambers about the specifics of made-up nomenclature, and most importantly a fundamental failure to communicate beyond a self-appointed pedestal of “objective” correctness.

Enter the other side—similarly ignorant and twice as quick to point out the same flaw in others. These people seem focused exclusively on identifying caricatures and outlying maniacs and appropriating them to vilify and demean the opposition.

(Oh, and both sides love to lob the term “snowflake” at each other. Christ—only the internet could ruin something a term as innocent as “snowflake.”)

Enable yourself to exclusively spend time between the two binaries and you have yourself a reality that only exists in code. And spend enough time reading through the endless hot takes and “am I the only one?” type threads and you’ll quickly realize that you’ve never had an original thought in your life. A pretty disheartening fact when you’ve set out to create content and write for a living.

“And the ghost of Descartes screams again in the dark,
‘Oh how could I have been so wrong?’
But above the screams the sirens sing their song”
– Dustin Kensrue, Thrice

Welcome to the new age.
Come downstairs and close the door behind you. Seat yourself behind the metal box and interact with all the other closeted isolationists. Enjoy the vacant sincerity and search for meaning through an onslaught of hyperbole and toxic reactionary statements about the “other side” or “those people.” Enjoy misappropriated hashtags and try desperately to persuade others to glare past their own hubris.

Most importantly—do all of this while realizing that you’re just another indistinguishable, isolated system.
Toss in the typical quarter-life crisis of value and vocation, and you’ve discovered the existential dread that followed me throughout the end of last year.

So how do you overcome this? How do you alternate your approach when you realize your pretty words are just an amalgamation of pop culture and some obsessive, verbose attempt at originality?

Acceptance. Pure acceptance.
Say yes to unoriginality. Laugh in the face of your own history and wonder why you ever were kept up at night by something as unachievable as originality. Why do you have to be original in the first place? Is your life any more or less valuable based on the distinct nature of its existence?

Don’t make it complicated.
The value of self comes from the existence, not from the justification of it. Embrace unoriginality and you will be embracing a helpful ally. Feel free to admit to yourself that your manic diatribe isn’t exactly trailblazing. Don’t seek value in rudimentary metrics or claps to justify your worth.

(If that’s what I was seeking, any marketer worth their salt would tell me that my title isn’t going to do any favors for me in terms of SEO.)

Don’t be reactionary.
It’s easy to buy into the idea that the only salvation from the Internet Age is the abandonment of it. Don’t be binary. And for the love of God, if you choose to do so? Spare us the blog post about it.

Be aware.
And I’m not referring however “woke” you may think you are. Be aware not of self, but of perspective. Your ability to change the fundamental rules of the internet or eliminate toxic cultures online is limited. But your ability to alter your reactions or your perception of that futility is much stronger. Perhaps through that you can vicariously help your causes. It might beat your alternatives.

Be humble.
There’s nothing special about this perspective or any other point of view. Remember our conversation about how holistically unoriginal you are? Awareness has no value beyond its value to yourself. There’s enough high-roading and gatekeeping as it is. Is it really necessary to ensure that your specific viewpoint is permeated throughout the culture? Being heard is hard enough—don’t alienate any more than you have to in order to sleep at night.

Show your tenacity for combining what’s come before rather than focus on an ill-fated attempt at artistic genius. If there’s any uniqueness left, it’s in your expressions of perception. We’re all playing with the same toys in the sandbox. But you might be one of the first to put a certain piece in a certain place.

Perhaps there’s some originality in that.

Original post by Michael Ruiz on Medium.