Plain vanilla

A couple of days ago I wrote the following in an email to a good friend:

everything just seems plain to me.... literally: plain, as in plain old boring vanilla, plain. And where's the fun in reading blog posts about vanilla?

In bank jargon "plain vanilla" means the products and services that are standardized. The goods, the price, the delivery... everything is established to a pre-agreed level between client and provider and there is no need to factor in additional resources, costs, constraints or unplanned time consumption. Winning plain vanilla deals is good because they bring in steady revenues without much effort.

Still, everyone knows that a company can't live on plain vanilla deals alone. Coming up with new added-value goods is what usually tends to brings success to a company. Developing innovative services and tailor-made solutions involves a Creative Process in which new problems are discovered, solutions are designed and tested to resolve this problem, resources are invested, risks are taken and finally, after much hard work and a little luck, a new product or service is designed and put on the market that provides a specific need with an innovative solution and a new level of satisfaction is reached.

It is this process that truly brings success to a company, much more so than any amount of plain vanilla deals could ever provide. It is this process that allows a company to continue to grow and develop itself and expand to further, farther, markets.

When I wrote to my friend telling her I felt like plain vanilla, that's exactly what I meant. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Hubby and I are currently running exclusively on plain vanilla. Our careers, our cravings, our possessions, our health, our free time, our lives... everything is running right on schedule and precisely at an established level of satisfaction that should easily mean things are good and there is every reason to be happy.

And yet, somehow, something feels stagnated... Sure life is good. Sure we've made it to a place that makes us feel comfortable and content. But, just like for a company, we can't go on relying on plain vanilla deals only. There has to be more... there must be more.


Am I going through a one-third-life crisis (assuming I live to be 90 that is)? Maybe.


Have I become a pretentious bourgeoise? Possibly.


And even though it sure as hell isn't what I set out to become 7 years ago when I landed in France for the first time, it does seem like it's so from where I'm standing here, outside the bubble, judging the me that's in the bubble.

And it's the me that's standing outside the bubble that keeps asking the same questions, trying to get the Creative Process to finally kick in, trying to provoke the situation that will provide new unforseen problems to arise and have to be dealt with, solutions to be designed and tested, risks to be taken, mistakes to be made, resources to be invested, frustrations to be overcome..... the whole expensive, risky, scary, exciting, necesary process that leads to (self?)improvement.

Because once the Process is in motion, it takes a while, granted, but inevitably one day you wake up and look back and realize that it was all worth it because you've grown, expanded, become wiser, better, stronger... you've put out something new and improved on the shelfs of the global insubstantial supermarket called Humanity.

Plain vanilla is fine for a while... but I can't let it become my "modus operandi".


Fned.