Who am I? No One. In my early 20’s I fell in love with academics, or at least the surface of academics; the conversations, the coffee shop philosophy, the competitive rush of an argument, the minutia. I loved books. I bought them to read, I bought them to be seen, I bought them for others to see me read. I loved heroes of thought. I wanted to be them, to write like them. I wanted their quirks, their idiosyncrasies, their eccentric gifts. I wanted others to view me like I viewed them. I fell in love with ideas. I frequented debate forums to promote them, to argue them, to parrot them. I blogged. My paragraphs were purple, overflowing with “thus” fluff. I became a creativity addict. Caffeine was no longer a stimulant but a requirement. Nicotine was no longer a stimulant, but a requirement. My mg’s increased but my output remained. Conversation became comical. Others invest so little thought into the things that spew from their mouth. Everything…everyone… became cliché. I realized we were playing a stupid game that neither of us were good at. We were engaged in intellectual dress up and “stupid” cannot be veiled by expensive ink or larger vocabulary. My mind was too linear, my arguments too curvy, my analogies bad. I argued with Latin…As I read more, I knew less. Academics became less fun. I began telling myself I was lazy because I didn’t read the five 400 page books I checked out at the local library. I read more than you, but never enough. My bar was always high. I became more reserved in my opinions in order to hide my ignorance. I began adding disclaimers to all my arguments so as not to be held accountable to anything I said. I began transitioning from “I’m surrounded by idiots”, to “I and all rest are idiots”, to “I’m an idiot”. I made excuses for why I didn’t read more, write more, learn more, retain more, think more…academics became a chore. I began obsessively googling myself to no avail. I began obsessing about my age, feeling the pressure to lower it so to escape the feeling of academic disappointment. In desperation I wrote some good articles and some bad books. I retired from the forums, argued less with other. I stopped believing. I stopped caring.



Who am I? No one. Who are those you think you want to be? Someone? Who are you?