Caveat Lector

I am not the best at everything I do. I am not even the best at most things I do. In all likelihood, I’m not the best at anything I do. (I might make a case for “best repository-rat blogger,” but mention would have to be made of the diminutive size of the field.)

This does not bother me. Being “the best” is not something I need.

It once was, I grant you, when I had nothing better to found my self-image upon. I allowed the pursuit of what others called excellence to lead me about by the nose. I did not think to question it; I never asked what I myself thought was worthwhile, never even thought about the yardsticks that were my life—until those yardsticks tried to kill me, and I hadn’t any choice but to back slowly and then quickly away from them. That broke my life.

(In passing: very little makes me angrier than being characterized like this: “emigrants from academia, under this schema, are well-adjusted people who recognized a malign institution and departed from it rather than adjusting to its abusive-family cycle of psychic violence.” Hogwash. Dismissive hogwash that completely ignores that the whole process broke my life. I was not well-adjusted at the time, not in the slightest; I was broken. I had one serious lot of adjusting to do, and a lot of processing before I realized what a dysfunctional environment I had departed. I only wish I had recognized its malignity up-front. I was too damn dumb to.)

Once I glued together the pieces, I learned that failure has its contentments, there’s room in the world for fools and clowns as well as Renaissance folk, and sometimes reaching for the brass ring results in nothing better or more useful than a brass ring. (What use is a brass ring, anyhow? I’ve never been quite sure.)

I also learned that the constant competition involved in “gotta be the best” and “gotta give 110% all the time every time” is both wearing and unproductive. Wearing, I should think, goes without saying. Unproductive requires explanation.

Opportunity cost is part of the problem. Real excellence requires time and effort, and returns do diminish after a certain point. Every moment spent pursuing the mountain peak is a moment that might be otherwise spent. Is the return worth it? Sometimes, perhaps. Always? Not a chance. The world and its tasks are too varied.

Best is often the enemy of good-enough, or even of improvement itself. Consider, for example, the perfectionism of the library world vis-a-vis its computer systems, and ask whether time and effort might have been better spent on less jawboning and more actual experimentation. That experimentation is now happening, mind you—it’s just mostly happening outside the library world, and who is to blame for that if not us?

Perfectionism walks hand-in-hand with overcaution, with unnecessary fear. Will you so much as try something that you’re not sure you’ll be the best at? That you’re not sure you care to give your little all to? Shame, if not; some things are fun and worthwhile even when there’s a sharp limit to what one can achieve. I’ve made this point with regard to writing, but I think perhaps music is the more salient example from my own life. I am not a terribly good singer. I will never be one, no matter how much effort I put into it. There are simply limits to the sounds my physical configuration can produce, and limits to what my cognitive capacity can do with a sheet of music. (C-clefs, ugh.)

Yet what a horrible waste, not to have sung with Fairfax Choral Society and the excellent Doug Mears, just because I am not and shall never be the best singer ever!

The largest difficulty with the inexorable call to personal achievement is simply that it is personal, and the world is larger than one person. I face this dilemma daily in my worklife. Institutional repositories are not a terribly sensible niche for the ambitious librarian; by almost any measure (never mind Les Carr’s), they have been an abject failure. If all I had to be concerned about were my own career, my own self-importance, I’d have been gone long since.

I’m still here. Still reminding myself, if truth be told, that a project neglected for nearly a year isn’t going to have turned around in five months. Why am I still here? Because open access is more important than I am.

Funny thing is, I’ve seen people make their careers all about them. My dad did it. It didn’t lead to fantastic achievements for him. It led to petty feuds, bitter anger, pathetic hidden fears, and what has always looked to me like less measurable progress than he might have managed otherwise. Not for me, thanks. I’d rather be a small fish in a more important pond—which is, of course, precisely what I am.

If brass rings are your thing, by all means collect ’em. Just let’s recognize their real worth, hm?