You’re allowed to be average at most things. Nobody’s great at everything, and the ones pretending are tired.

Excellence is expensive, and you only have enough attention for a couple of things at a time. Being ordinary at everything else is not failure, it is arithmetic. The people who seem good at everything are usually either hiding the gaps or wearing themselves out keeping the display up.

Choose the one or two things you want to be genuinely good at this year and name them. Then give yourself permission, out loud, to be mediocre at something you have been quietly ashamed of.