I suck at mediocre

I've spent the majority of my life in extreme situations. I grew up with a single father who spent most his time trying to make ends meet. We never had much. I suspect that we were close to homeless and without food more often that he'd care to admit. I grew up with 3 siblings. We usually hated each other or loved each other. We never really just got along. I've lived in sheds with dirt floors and apartments along Sandy boulevard. People either liked me or hated me. There really wasn't much in between. I've got an extreme personality. It makes it hard for people to deal with me, I've always been that way. Lately I've been trying to change that. I don't like hurting people with my course or sharp attitudes.

What I've finally realized is that I suck at normal. I'm not good at doing things moderately. I can't even have a conversation moderately. I have to feel extreme to one side or the other. I feel deeply passionate about things, people, ideas in extreme ways. Even my choice to follow Christ was taken in a very extreme way. Either I'm all in or I'm all out. I'm no good at normal. I suck at mediocre. I hate doing mediocre work. I don't want anything to do with it. It doesn't just bore me, it irritates me. I like tackling big projects, difficult obstacles. I love problem solving. The bigger the problem the more interested in it I get. But I suck at day to day things.

Sometimes I even procrastinate day to day work just so I can be under a time crunch to get it done. I create extreme situations to make it more challenging and interesting. I thrive under pressure. Put me in an extreme circumstances and 9 times out of 10 I'll perform flawlessly. Put me in a mediocre situation and I'll probably mess it up.

Even with people I have a hard time interacting with people I don't have relationships with. Either they like me or they hate me. Everyone in between is awkward and hard to talk to. Which also makes it difficult to meet new people because I pretty much have nothing to say to them. Ever. Sometimes that causes me to be really rude unintentionally. More often than not I inadvertently insult people because I don't even think about the weight of what I'm saying.

This is made ten times worse by my disdain for lying. I absolutely hate lying. I'm terrible at it. I can't even keep secrets because it makes me feel like I'm lying to someone. I'm not deceptive. I'm just no good at it. When I was very young my Grandmother used to get all up in ma grill when I lied. More than once, even when I told the truth she would hound me about it. She was convinced I was just a natural born liar. So I spent my life trying to prove her wrong. If she hated deception so much then I was going to show her how far from it I could stray.

One time I told her to go to her room. She was sitting in the living room complaining about the noise and I evaluated the situation honestly and asked why she didn't just go to her room. I definitely spent the rest of the day outside. I do that to people all the time! It comes out before I can stop and really think about how stupid my statement is going to sound, even when its honest. Frankly people aren't real enthused by it. They think I don't value their feelings, they have no idea that its because I value their feelings that I'm honest with them. That doesn't really translate very well though.

I'm not sure yet if my extremest personality is a bad thing or a good thing but what I do know is that finesse and attention is needed to make sure that the way I communicate myself is less brash. I'm not sure I'll ever enjoy doing normal things or living moderately. I honestly want to burn my life at hyper speed and deal with the crash when I'm dead. I'd rather be so extreme and so loud that people have to tell me to keep my mouth shut (and boy do they) than to spend my life quite and content and at the end be asked why I never spoke up.

I don't even want to hear the question asked "If you disagreed with it, why did you let it happen?". Maybe I'm too extreme. Maybe I offend some people. But what I'll never be is stuck between two roads living in mediocrity.