Jack of all trades, master of none. It sounds a little like a derogatory statement, one you wouldn’t want applied to you. For me, it is a way of life, and one that I am proud of. I can’t pinpoint when it occurred to me that I am above average at nearly every aspect of my life and am elite at almost nothing; but the realization did not sadden me. Some examples of what I’m referring to:
In high school I was a three-sport athlete; football, wrestling, and baseball. In nearly every instance, I was not quite good enough to be a starter at the varsity level. But if you dropped me to JV in any of these sports, I dominated. Absolutely dominated.
I am an intelligent person. In 3rd grade I scored unusually high on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, prompting the powers that be to put me into a Talented and Gifted program for the remainder of my education. Amongst the normal kids, I stood out as unusually smart. Amongst the unusually smart, I was barely able to keep up.
I can write, but this isn’t the best blog you’ve ever read. I’m not ugly, but I’m far from beautiful. I am fun, but have never been the life of any party. In fact, the only area in which I feel amongst the best is in my job. I can produce the shit out of a radio show.
Before I continue, this isn’t meant to be braggadocious or self-deprecating. It is merely an objective look at my life, or as close to objective as one can be about themselves.
It has come to my attention that most people don’t wish for this kind of widespread competence. It seems that most people want to be great at one thing, and the rest is almost irrelevant. If you’d like to be elite at one thing, everything else needs to fall by the wayside, and the examples of this are rampant. Look at nearly any successful athlete. There’s a reason these people seem a little dumb and at times have difficulty functioning in normal society. In most cases, these people were spotted at a young age and their life was directed towards success in a given sport. They didn’t come home from school and read a book or play video games, they practiced.
When I got home from school I read books, played video games, played sports, watched TV, listened to music, and did a plethora of other things. I can tell you the plot of To Kill A Mockingbird, the cheat code to Contra, the rules of hot box (or pickle), and the backstory of every character to ever appear on Saved By The Bell. If you reference something that was culturally relevant in the last 20 years, I’m right with you. I can hold my own in nearly any conversation and will never feel dumb for not knowing something that seemingly everyone else knows. This, I believe, is the value of being a Jack of all trades.
If I wanted to psychoanalyze myself, I’d say a lot of my desire to never stand out (either in a positive or negative way) has to do with moving around as a kid. I changed elementary schools in 4th grade, high schools my sophomore year, and went to college knowing nobody. I currently have at least 5 distinct groups of friends, each very different from the next, yet I fit in with all of them. I am a chameleon. If you met me, you’d probably like me, because I would seem similar to you. This is because whatever you are into, I am into as well. Maybe not to the same extent as you, but I could hold up my end of the conversation.
It is only recently that I noticed this in myself, but now that I see it, it is impossible to deny. I unconsciously alter my personality to fit the people who surround me. I’m not lying, per se, just omitting things that don’t fit. The only people who see my whole personality are those who I am very close to. Some would say that this makes me boring, that it eliminates my originality. These people usually stand out in a crowd.
I’m not the best at anything. Maybe I never will be. But I am a well-rounded person who is comfortable in his own skin, even if that skin is rarely shown in its entirety. And I’ll never feel left out.
