Blog for the Ordinary

I have never done anything in my life that would be classified as extraordinary. So far the whole arrangement has worked out swimmingly.
Who wants to be extra-ordinary anyway? Being plain-Jane ordinary is bad enough, but extra-ordinary? I might as well disappear. I know that I am now coming across as a confused exchange student trying to grapple with the English language, but I had to frolic down that trail for just a moment as I pondered on the interesting sum of those two words. Some English words are so enigmatic in their confusion that they cease to confuse. Such is the case with the word extraordinary.
I digress.
I have never done anything in my life that would be classified as extraordinary. Truthfully I don’t feel a need to, nor do I feel my life lacking in anything as a result of my apparent flippancy with the issue. I go about my days trouncing from work to home, swinging my lunch bag full of food in one direction, and swinging its empty vessel a little higher in the other direction. In between these events fall the workings of a banking center, conversations with those I like and those I do not, laughter, unexpected sneezes, bathroom trips, the cracking of knuckles, text messages, cross-word puzzles, and a MAX trip or two. I can’t say that I have ever been handed a gold statue for most exciting life, and if I ever did I would be the first to cry foul play, but I would say that I have a satisfactory amount of unplanned events that’s keep my life popping. There is at least an occasional pop.
Extraordinary people intrigue me. What is it like to have their schedule and submit to the self discipline that they must endure in order to rise to their level of greatness? It seems like an impossible feat—like trying to hold your self underwater in an attempt at drowning. Eventually your weakness overrules your desire to die. But I am not extraordinary, so of course I would not understand. People like JRR Tolkein, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Batman—they all embodied some sort of crazy drive that I simply don’t possess. They are jet engines in a world full of four cylinders.
The thing about being extraordinary, however, is that there soon ceases to be any balance in life. These people have a drive, but it is a concentrated drive, which leaves little room for relationships, hobbies, deeper probing of human thought… Unless, of course, those things are the objects of their extraordinary nature. Suicide is indicative of this common thread in The Extraordinary. I am not taking anything away from how amazing these people can be, I am still truly spellbound by the product of their dedication. It merely solidifies my desire to be ordinary. Hold that extra.
This topic was fluttering around in my head because I have been thinking about writing a book. Thinking—keyword—we can all share a chuckle now. The thought of being an extraordinary writer, one that would take captive the souls of readers and refuse to render them until the very last word, whose images would bead up above the surface and then soak deep into the pores, like a glistening sweat when the sun beats down—that’s an author I would love to be. But. I have since discovered that the drive which places those at an extraordinary level, that tilts back the heads of those who stare—it asks too much. So I will write a book, on that I am determined, but a dream is not enough to sacrifice life and love.
To have a gold statue at the end of life and then have no one to thank save the Academy? Let’s just say a gold statue is a poor conversationalist.
I’ll stick with just being nominated.