On Mediocrity
Letting the label go to keep the work alive
Hey Internet Friends,
I just realized it’s been a month since the last time I wrote here.
A month full of thoughts, drafts, and sentences that collapsed after the second subordinate clause. Relatively energized.
Then, I'm relatively tired.
Now, a tangle of possibilities, improbable decisions, and a few closet skeletons are banging on the doors from the inside.
Also, my body has been yelling at me, loudly, about some mental and physical rest.
But most importantly, that’s what we’re here for today.
For the first time in at least ten years, I’m clearly admitting to myself:
✝️ 📺 My job isn’t my life. 📺 🛐
I got a lot of religious memes today, so keep scrolling for this kind of content
The label I stitched to my chest with such devotion? The flag I proudly raised, claiming Hey, this is me! I’m not sure it’s mine anymore.
That realization isn’t gentle on my already fragile balance.
But forcing myself to fit into a box I designed (or purchased) before the last two or three tech revolutions, and clinging to it at all costs, makes even less sense.
Irresponsible? Overly pragmatic?
Who can tell?
For what it’s worth, the point of this space stays the same.
It evolves with me, along with my discomfort and my relief, my profession and my person.
It won’t change your life.
It won’t fix your career.
It won’t get you a better job.
It’s a small, honest slice of what it feels like to be creative in a world where creativity isn’t automatically a noble, intellectual craft anymore.
Where sensitivity isn’t an exclusive property of artists and designers anymore.
Where over-consumption plus a basic toolset can make anyone productive with a couple of hours and a screen.
Specialization is over (or: the cost of cheap magic)
I keep wondering if the excess of creative functionalism I’m living in is a wake-up call to finally identify myself with something that genuinely makes me feel good, or maybe if it’s time to tell my therapist that mediocrity isn’t the real enemy. Because the industry changed.
Lower production costs + AI = a certain de-personalization of the creative.
We try a little of this and a little of that because the client needs it, the budget for specialists is gone, and maybe AI can fill the gap.
Is that a new form of mediocrity?
Is that what I’m signing up for?
Honestly, probably yes.
But also, I never wanted to become a specialist when it comes to creative workflows. I was never excited about making the perfect drop on the perfect metal surface or building a tool to automate the next deliverable.
I’ve always cared more about why that drop matters in the story, who benefits from that workflow, and how to make it legible for people who don’t live inside the software.
Especially hybrids like me, the ones who avoid labels, who perhaps always felt the pull of average as a calmer state, are now exposed to the peak of I can do that too, and you do it badly.
Because with GPT, Midjourney & co. You can explore styles, parse a brief, write an analysis, or even a strategy.
Threading back to my practice
So this stays ours, or maybe just a few posts you missed to understand why I’m here and why I’m still doing it
From Never enough: the ache of being many roles and feeling like none of them. This is the same admission, just kinder.
From Empty rooms & blank pages: when the productive room freezes you, switch rooms mentally. The ordinary walk, the thin Dutch sun on water, that’s where the shades appear.
From The freedom of failure: stop seeing failure as a full stop, but embrace it as a door open to sharpen your taste, cultivate ideas, and learn your personal identity to move around.
So what’s left?
My manager would say: taste.
My therapist would say: critical, conscious practice.
But a third voice in me whispers: stop performing, embrace mediocrity.
Because mediocrity doesn’t make you a bad designer.
It can make you clearer, less enchanted.
It helps you choose where to spend energy, or not at all.
And maybe I should save some for a run in the park.
Until next time (maybe),
L.