• I've always wanted to be a great writer. I've always wanted to live up to the best. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, they're a few of whom I aspired to be. I thought to be the best, you had to be born that way, with some kind of mysterious or righteous nature, and in that case, I would always be inadequate. Maybe it was just my lack of self confidence, or maybe it was the incessant obligation I made to myself to become what I imagined as a success, but never once did I believe I could ever truly be unparalleled to those I studied and cherished. The notion turned stones over in my head, like Sisyphus, my will to create would reach it's peak, and tumble down once more, relentlessly over and over. The disorder that was my endeavor came so near to collapsing around me, but then it came. The revelation I so desperately needed. You see, sometimes it's not so wrong for your teachers and professors to encourage you to dig deeper, and find another meaning in the words you hear and see. It was that exact over-analysis everyone complains about that changed everything. It was one phrase emitted from my father's mouth.

    "I don't believe in absolutes."


    I didn't quite understand it at first glance. To me, absolutes were everywhere and everything. Green was my favorite color, so therefore it was the best. Summer was my favorite season, so therefore it was superlative. They felt solid, and real, but when I altered my speculation they became flexible, mold-able, pliable to my own liberation. At a moments notice, I could change what I felt, what I thought, and this correlation between self and alternatives was not confined to just me. Anyone, at any time could change their beliefs. There was endless diversity to which people thought. It brought me to understand the inhibition that brewed inside of me, was a product of my own, and this incoherent ambition of mine was muddy simply because I thought that I was not the best. But I was. I am. The best writers are those who do not struggle with appraisal, or approval, because they understand, nothing is ever completely uniform, that invariability is impossible in a place where nothing is ever the same. Even this assertion is contingent among the public. When nothing is obsolete, there is only one source found to be true, and that is the conclusion you will draw. I found didn't need to be Hemingway, or Twain, all I needed was to be myself.