AN UNWANTED GIFT

You have a talent, a gift. It starts out raw, a little rough, but you work at it, polish it and hone it. In time you get pretty good at what you do. You're not the best in your chosen field but you aren't the worst either. You're average, but average, at least, is okay. Sure, you'd like to be the best, the very best, but your talent just doesn't reach that far. You've come to live with your averageness, to accept it as a fact. That never stops you from trying, from striving, from working hard. So sometimes you've had flashes of a little brilliance, a little shine, a little bit of what the best have every day.
Time, though, has a funny way of working against you. While you were honing your skills, trying to make the most of your average talent, the world was deciding it didn't need your kind. Heck, it didn't need people who knew what they were doing. It just wanted something fast, sloppy or not. Just fast. It didn't want to pay at all, let alone pay for quality. Just get it to me fast. And faster. And faster yet. Anyone who can get it to me fast is in. It doesn't matter if it is right, or good, or of decent quality. Just get it to me fast, and cheaply.
Suddenly all of that work you put into getting better, getting the most out of your talent, works against you. Your experience works against you. Because the world doesn't want to pay for talent or experience. The world doesn't want to pay at all. The world wants it free and fast. And to heck with it being good, right or of decent quality.
Where does this leave you? Among the great unwashed unwanted, on a list of people society no longer needs and surely doesn't want. You have no value in today's marketplace. Not because you can't do fast, but because you don't do sloppy or wrong. Not because you can't do it, but because you have done it for too long and no one wants to pay for your experience or even your average talents.
Why hire you when some kid off the street will do it for nothing? Why pay for you when they can get it for free? So what if the product isn't worth even that price? Heck, it didn't cost me anything, so why should I, the customer, care?
You never saw this coming because you grew up in a time when quality mattered and people made fun of the cheap, poorly made products from overseas lands. You were formed at a time when if you had a job to do, you did it well, gave it your very best. You came from a time when quality was more important than speed. Yes, if you could do quality quickly, you were more valuable, but quality got first dibs.
That is not the world we live in anymore. And that is a world where you are not wanted anymore. You're an anachronism, a dinosaur, a lost man from another world, another dimension.
And no one wants what you do anymore.