It is ok to be mediocre

Indian Startup funding 2021: ~$38 Billion
Indian Startup layoffs 2022: 10k+ and counting

Bitcoin peak 2021: ~$60k
Bitcoin bottom 2022: ~<$20k and falling

Work locations 2021: Goa, Manali, everywhere
Work locations 2022: BKC, Whitefield, CyberHub

Business cycles come and go. Bull and bear markets come and go. Rocketships come and go.

Anyone who wasn’t starting up, investing in crypto, or working for a new-age company in 2021 would have been burning with FOMO. After all, the world was screaming at you, calling you stupid for missing out, calling you boring, calling you risk-averse (as if that’s bad!), or simply making you feel like you are wasting your youth.

And it can get easy to be lost in this noise

- to start looking at FDs and think ‘that’s for the old generation’.
- to start looking down upon traditional 9–5 jobs because ‘that’s boring and CoRpORaTe RaT RacE’
- to start looking down upon people who chose to settle down and live in non-glamorous locations as dull and boring

And that sucks because some people don’t want to overachieve. Some people are genuinely happy and content living their boring 9 to 5, office to home, no wanderlust, no long weekends, no adventure simple lives. Because that’s SUSTAINABLE for them. That works for them. Not everyone wants to choose volatility as a trade-off for high returns.

The world could be moving from noodles to sushi to hummus to taco to dalgona to Belgian waffles to whatever else is the next food fad. But some people are really happy eating daal chawal all their lives.

I just want to say, that’s okay. Fuck FOMO. Try YOLO. And that means you decide how you want to live this one life you have. The world is your oyster but if all you want to do is come home and eat aloo paratha, then so be it.

Eat, sleep, mediocrity, repeat. It’s fine. Being average is actually great. And to be average consistently is quite difficult. That’s why index funds AUMs consistently have been on the rise :)

Not everyone wants to chase stars. Some people are happily chilling under the starlight.