Just trying to be me.

The idea that you can be unspectacular, boring, marginally talented, lazy, and still achieve your dreams, is an alluring and insidious one. It’s the reason people have made careers out of reality television, like the Real World alum who set off to distant locales such as New Zealand to compete in challenges for prize money. Never mind that some of them are in their mid-30s and have been at this for years, this is the job, and you do it until your third or fourth knee surgery. That’s why it was so refreshing to see Ali Fedotowsky, a contestant on this season of The Bachelor, elect to leave the competition to return to work after she ran out of vacation days. Real jobs don’t offer reality-show leave, and it was nice, for a change, to see a young person choose a real career over the sad, slow withering of the long-distance reality star.