My Two-Cents: Being Bad

Now the expert, leader, and exceller was once the novice, neophyte, and beginner. In order to excel, or to even consider achieving, maybe we need to first be god awful.

I am god awful and remembering to do my laundry, knowing when to shut up, and singing. My roommate Mallory says she’s bad at being coordinated and guitar hero. Skyler says she’s bad at throwing a ball. And Gabi says she’s bad at picking a movie, handwriting, and shaving her legs – and truth to that because you’d be a girl lying if you haven’t woken up the morning after shaving your legs just to realize you’ve missed an entire line.

Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad – these aren’t just lyrics from a kick-ass Michael Jackson song, they’re also a universal self-truth we realize after starting something new. Sometimes as a beginner, we have to be bad before we can be good. Because you can’t ever be good at something unless your once bad. So my (late) new years resolution is to be fucking awful! 

For a while in my post-high school education, I had no direct idea of what I wanted to do. I had about 50 different though-tangents. But that was about it. I knew I couldn’t live like this forever – and thankfully so, because then I would never really accomplish anything – but for the time being I actually kind of liked it. I had the freedom to explore my options, the freedom to be bad. If you own it, being bad rocks! You can relish in the ambiguity of not quite knowing what you want – and swim in the possibility of being bad. And the beginner gets lifeguard permission to dive right into the deep end of badness.

A beginner knows no bounds, only unexplored potential territory. A beginner doesn’t know 100% what's going to happen, what the future entails – but that’s where their strength lies. Because if you know exactly what's going to happen in the future, you’re probably not doing anything interesting or worthwhile. The beginner gets to specialize in benign the generalist – and the generalist has the freedom to be bad. Expert to none, you hold the gun. One day you will (hopefully) be a master of some trade, an expert in something you find worthwhile. But until then, you get to be a jack of all trades. A bad Jack, for all you care. Enjoy the temporary limbo where the beginner gets to reside and be fucking bad. Someday you will be good, but while you're not, savor your badness.

I may be bad at singing now, but someday I might be adjacent to Adele. Probably not on that one, but it’s a pleasant thought. Hopefully, Mallory finally caves into my belligerent peer pressure and embraces being bad at guitar hero so she can one day strum alongside Nixxi Sixx and I. (If Motley Crew ever decides to play live from our living room in Lincoln Nebraska.) Maybe Skyler will one day be able to play catch with Derek Jeter (also probably never happening). And optimistically, one day Gabi will learn to successfully shave her legs. Or just marry rich and get laser treatment. 

Successfully Bad,
Kate