So, my roomate and I are cat-sitting the most wonderful cat ever. She’s a girl with a boy’s name (Smokey Joe), is huge and adorable, comes when she is called, and knows how to tap people on the shoulder. She has better social skills than most of my friends. But more importantly, she’s made me think a lot about my own existence/sense of accomplishment.

As someone who has suffered from a lifelong feeling of inadequacy-somehow failure seemed like too mundane a word to say here; plus saying it would put me in the awful category of being cliche, which would reference my even worse fear of mediocrity- its taken 10 years of physical (pilates), mental (therapy), and spiritual (drinking & dancing) fitness to get me where I am today, a fully-functional human being with a job, hobbies, and somewhat successful social interactions. And yet, its still pretty hard for me, and most people I know, to feel proud of my accomplishments. I actually can’t remember the last time someone I know said they were proud of anything they themselves did.

Back to the kitty, who just lays around a lot, but seems pretty psyched all the time with just being herself. In trying to think of some real live people who fall into that category I ended up on some Twitter pages, checking out the recent tweets of some DJ dudes I follow for inspiration.

Here’s what I learned. Eli Escobar- always looking for the perfect beat, asking around for help identifying songs. Cosmo Baker- constant shout outs to Brooklyn (where he was born) and Philly (raised), lamenting local violence and encouraging community. A-Trak-basically @everyone, with simple comments- dude is clearly using Twitter for the reason it was actually created- to say hi to your friends, no matter whether it makes sense to outsiders or not.

Of course, these guys have already arrived- and get things like private tours of the synth museum, and gigs on the rooftop of Hotel Rivington. But there’s something to learn from the collectivity of their down-to-earth, honest, light-hearted comments. Like Mr. Rogers told us, the secret seems amusingly obvious- don’t take it too seriously, and be yourself.

—Fucci