Leisa Michelle

Nerdy Monologues of an Autodidact

I’m Not Original

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This article won’t be for everyone. It’s for those of you whose Resistance keeps you quiet when you ought to raise your voice and let out a battle cry.

Everyone has come across those quotes that insist that nothing is original and everything novel has already been said or done. At some point in my life I managed to internalize this and take it a step further. I was crushed by thinking, “Nothing I think really matters.”

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in drawing this conclusion. And yet despite this hopeless thought, some of us are eager and hold on, searching for a moment when we’ll finally have a novel idea to express. Others surge into the swamp of self-doubt. But regardless of which group we find ourselves in, this is silly. Be they novel or not, popular or unpopular, our thoughts should be expressed loudly and shamelessly. Originality isn’t the goal: the expression of the unexpressed is.

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Fishing For Failure

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I’m standing in the middle of a vast, open field. Everywhere I look, in every direction, the whole 360 degrees, there’s nothing. Just nothing. The field just stretches on and on. I squint, desperately trying to spot something in the distance. A forest, a lake, a mountain, a stack of smoke, something to run towards, something to hope for. But I see nothing. I feel nothing. If I just knew which direction to go, if I could figure out which direction I truly want to go, then I might be able to make progress. I can get anything I want if I work hard enough. But what do I want? Where do I go? Gahhh!

I came up with this metaphor while leaving a voicemail for my older sister. This is how I feel when I try to think of what to do with my life. I don’t feel a pull in any direction, I don’t see any sparkling opportunities, and I have no idea what I want.

“I just want to be happy. I just want to be successful,” I said to her. And an hour or two later, she replied, “This might be terrible advice, but I think you should choose something knowing full well it might turn out to be not awesome. Forget about being successful. Just go out and fail. Yeah. Do it! Go out and fail!”

Forget about being successful? That’s crazy. That’s like saying forget about getting a good job. Forget about raking in six figures. Forget about getting a mortgage. Forget about starting a family while you’re young. Forget about all the arbitrary goals and stuff that stresses you out and just… live. Just live life. Huh. Maybe that’s not such crazy advice.

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Safety In Illusion

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Perception rarely lines up with reality. It can be painful when our invented reality is shattered by true reality. Sometimes, when our perception of reality is too strong, or true reality is too foreign, we want to turn back the clock. We long for the bliss of illusion.

But you can’t truly go back. You can try, but it won’t work. Because how can you piece together the million shards of a broken window? So you are left with two choices: either embrace reality for what it is or stand in place. But know that even if you’re standing still, everything and everyone keeps moving. If you don’t choose to embrace reality and move forward, you will have lost not only your illusion, but your life.

There is no safety in illusion. There is certainly safety in routine, but not in illusion. What makes the shattering of an illusion so painful is having to adjust. You have to live in uncertainty and discomfort while you discover new boundaries, new limits, new rules – and also new freedoms. The unknown is known to be terrifying.

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