Not a success story

I’ve been on this planet for a bit more than 30 years and my life, so far, has been the opposite of a success story. Nothing I did in the past 30 years screams success. I wasn’t the best student at school, I wasn’t the best at playing sport. I’m not one of the best designers nor one of the best developers. I’m not a superb writer nor a unique human being. I have not earned a lot of money nor have I created anything unique or special.

Amongst the countless possible lives, mine is extremely unremarkable. And that’s absolutely fine. Success stories are not rare, especially on the internet. Particularly because “the internet” has a very odd way to define what a success story is. “Designer goes viral with product X and makes Y amount of money in Z amount of time” is a common one. Articles get written, stories get shared. All this as if we’re supposed to learn something from these stories.

The majority of those success stories can be traced back to a combination of being the right person at the right time with the right product.

For every single one of those people who “made it” there’s probably hundreds of other people with a very similar story that will forever live in the internet oblivion because stars didn’t align in their favor.

So what are we supposed to do with this newly found knowledge? As I always say, I’m happy for these people, I’m not mad at them. But the older I become, the more I find these stories completely uninspiring. Am I supposed to be “inspired” by someone making 50k selling some WordPress theme? Why? Like seriously, what’s inspirational about it?

Again, good for them. But what are we celebrating here really? We live in this completely fucked up world where on the one end we fight against income inequality and on the other we celebrate people’s “success” aka fortune (not always, just way too often).

Maybe this is just me getting tired or maybe it’s just a sign I need to spend more time outside. Whatever the case may be, let me just say that it’s OK if your life is not a “success story”. It’s ok if you simply wake up in the morning and try your best to be a great husband, wife, dad, mother, brother, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend, colleague, neighbor, or simply a good human being. In my opinion, that’s far more important and valuable than everything else.