I believe in mediocrity. It’s one of the reasons why I write so much. If I were trying to make everything monumental, if I believed that everything I did was important, then I wouldn’t get anything done. I wouldn’t know how to do anything. I believe in mistakes and spelling errors and not looking something over before I hit post. I believe in my own shitty writing.

I used to work with teens. One of the worst hangups that any young person has is that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. One of the things that gets in the way of their genius has to do with this belief that something isn’t worth doing if you don’t do it well.

Well, I believe in doing things badly, in just doing them, and in not doing them well.

I believe that, when doing anything, that you should not aim for a job well done or self importance or even satisfaction often but simply a job done. Completed. Taken care of and thought about more deeply later. This is because, when you think that you have done something well, then you think that you do not need to keep doing it.

Writing is not something that you finish. Art is not something that you get done and over with. It’s one of those things that haunt you—it’s not a day’s work or a week’s worth or even a decade’s work. It’s a life’s work. This means that, if you really care about something, then you have all the time you need to do it. It means that you should try to do a mediocre job, that you should never try to satisfy your present day demons, because you are less interested in them than a life’s trajectory.

Mediocrity is hard to hold. There are only some people who are allowed to be mediocre. Men are allowed to be mediocre. White men especially. This is because mediocrity is a necessity to creativity and white men are the ones who have been allowed this necessity. For those of us who were trained to overachieve, allowing ourselves mediocrity means that we are also allowing ourselves to create.

However! And this is a big however—mediocrity is not about laziness. There is a difference between being mediocre and being lazy. When you are lazy, you are not curious enough to finish what you started. You think that no one cares anyway and that what you have going on will make no sense to anyone except you. When you allow yourself to practice mediocrity, you understand that what you have going on will never be finished but that you always have more time to try and try again.

This is because, to practice mediocrity is also to practice consistency. You must never allow yourself only to be mediocre once. You have to try, as hard as you can, to be mediocre constantly. Allowing yourself mediocrity everyday is about freedom. It is about allowing yourself the pleasure of getting through something without feeling that you must work harder than anyone else or that you must prove yourself to be more exceptional than anyone else. It’s about allowing yourself the pleasure of just doing something for the sake of doing it.

There is nothing more satisfying than allowing yourself time to do things that you believe you do not do well each and everyday. There is nothing more freeing than being able to make bad art, to start stories with no plot or ending, and to draw faces when you have no idea how to draw noses.

This applies to writing but, I think, it also applies to life. Cook food badly, sleep in a bit late, and forget to exercise when you really meant to. A life worth living is a life that is able to be lived in. It’s when you live really badly that you stumble upon the reasons why you truly and madly enjoy this state that we call being alive.