Kurt Vonnegut once wrote:

A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world champions.

I read Breakfast of Champions when i was 16. This is one of the few passages from any book that has stuck with me. Unfortunately, I thought it was no longer relevant. I was wrong.