Standing out is one of the most difficult things to do. It usually entails having some talent or ability that makes you extraordinary somehow. It seems that I possess rare talents which serve no true conventional purpose.  As much as I try to adapt, my talents are too precise to simply be wasted on the mundane and trivial matters of what this hedonistic excuse of a society considers daily life. The grind, as it is known, is so cliché; yet, for much of my life it felt as if I were stuck in a grinder. Without boring into the complexities of the metaphor, I could not explain a metaphor to you without spinning a multitude of metaphors, creating a complete and utter cacophony of paradoxical riddles and rhetoric leaving you awed at my ability to put together cutesy little vocabulary words in just the right way.

While I have always been very talented with writing and analysis, and for many years have been praised about my writing abilities, I’ve also received as much, if not more, pushback from those who apparently want to belittle me. For example, I once was told by a professor with a PhD in History that my writing was too rhetorical. Apparently, earning a doctorate doesn’t teach you that rhetoric just means being effective in the persuasiveness of your writing or speaking. Perhaps, what he meant to say is my tendency to be too grandiloquent. Without trying to be pompous, I need to dash in a little flair. Otherwise, the mundane drudgery of essay writing kills me; at least, the essays academic types and freelance clients wanted me to write. 

After all these years, in reflection, apparently my writing was at too high of a level even in my college years for even highly educated academics to fully comprehend. This isn’t my ego speaking; it’s a humble brag for what I’ve accomplished through my greatly tiring and strenuous efforts to become the best possible writer I can. Even though I know the depth of my own genius, sometimes I cannot fathom what practical uses such genius may serve. 

Whenever I am distracted by such trite matters as attraction and longing and an everlasting lack of satisfaction with myself, it is not that I can’t perform a task, but rather lacking the willpower to do it. Whatever I produce is more an action of reflex than an application of genius. It is just good enough, let us say, sufficient in the most basic terms. If I can score well in such mediocrity compared to my true abilities, what keeps me from truly striving to be great?

What has become of me is that I use my often disused skill sets and talents to aid me in my private musings. The poetic prose I compose is but an outlet for my abilities, currents of electrical impulses ordering my fingers to type out particular combinations of letters to form syllables, words, phrases, and sentences to fill a reader’s mind with wonder. Over the years, I’ve become addicted to the rhythm and flow of language as it passes by before me on the page; in some ways, it has become my vice of choice. The written words are my lifeblood, and my train of thought often barrels through at the most inopportune times, just as the growing urge for an illicit substance can distract you from being productive. 

~ Amelia Desertsong