Little Fish In a Little Pond - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/73/blame-it-on-art

There's that phrase that someone is a big fish in a little pond. This is to mean that they're big stuff for the small circle that they travel in. The thing about this is that it's valid. In high school my stand partner thought himself a composer.

He loved to consider himself the next Mozart, and wrote musicals, symphonies, and dreamed about being a composer of film scores. While in high school, no one else had this dream, no one else was trying to organize a full orchestra with choir to perform their home brewed piece of work, so he was the composer. He was the only thing that was there, he was the only composer in the thousands of students, and he was big stuff.

Then he went to college.

I didn't keep in touch with him, and I don't know the full story, but I do know these simple facts. He never finished his degree. He got arrested a few years later for pedophilia because he was back at our high school trying to flirt with a Freshman girl, while he was a college student. He worked at a Pizza Hut as a delivery guy. He keeps trying to live the dream, but still hasn't made it.

The problem about not being able to make it? He keeps thinking that he's the only one in the pond. He is stuck in high school.

In high school, he was the only one that was doing it. There was no competition because he was the only one that he was competing against. It's easy to be number one when there's no one else to compete with. You can make world records when you're the only one in the world doing something. The problem is that he moved out of that small pond and is now trying to make it in the very competitive world of composition, without a degree, without experience, and without anything more than his pipe dream from high school (note high school ended for him 11 years ago).

On the other hand, when it comes to my art of choice (writing) I've never been a big fish in any pond that I've lived in.In high school I wasn't the best, in college I wasn't the best, and in every writing group that I've ever participated in, there's been someone in there that was better than me. I wish I could say that I was the best at what I love to do, but that's the catch. For my favorite form of art, I love doing it, but I'm not the best. I can put in hours and hours and enjoy every second of it, but that doesn't make me the best at it, it just makes me the most in love with what I'm doing, and I'm okay with that. It's frustrating sometimes knowing that I'm not the best, and super frustrating writing and then knowing that it'll never be seen by any other eyes but my own, but I'm okay with it at the same time, because at least I wrote it. At least at the end of the day I can look at some of the things that I've created and be proud at what I've created, even if no one else (except for you three people that keep reading) reads it.