The Usual Pattern

Just a bit of silliness. AI directed riffing on a seed paragraph. Of course I am much better looking. Would I lie to you?

He was a lot like others. A mixture of arrogance and humility. Whenever he had a good idea, he found someone else had beaten him to the punch. He didn't bother looking at his bad ideas. And he was much like others. It's the human condition.

He wasn’t dumb. That much he knew. But smarts never added up to much on their own. He’d had plenty of good ideas—just never first. Someone else always got there ahead of him, usually louder, usually with a book deal.

He didn’t lose sleep over it. What would be the point? If an idea wasn’t useful, he let it go. If it was useful, it was already out there. That’s how the world worked.

People said he overthought things. Maybe he did. But most people didn’t think enough, so it balanced out. He figured he landed somewhere in the middle—too smart to be content, not clever enough to break out.

He talked to himself more than he talked to others. Less friction that way. Fewer corrections, too. Conversations with people had become a hassle—everyone pushing some angle, waiting to talk, not really listening. He stopped trying to fix that.

He wasn’t a cynic, just realistic. Most folks wanted the same things: not to be bothered, not to be wrong, maybe to be liked. He didn’t blame them. He just didn’t have the energy to play along every day.

He’d wanted to matter once. That urge faded. Now he just wanted a decent chair, a window that opened, a nice meal and time to think a thing through. Whether it changed anything didn’t seem to matter much anymore.

In the end, he turned out a lot like others. That wasn’t the plan. But it made sense.

It’s the human condition.