What is my talent? Do I have one? What rule demands that I do? If I have no talent, what do I have left? If I can generate no appreciable creative works for the world, what reason should I live for? People? People are transient. No one lasts forever. Myself? My self is a shell wracked by base needs and desires, prejudices and superstitions, contradictions and confusion. The higher pursuit of logic? What use is a study that doesn’t answer my own questions, only those of others who refuse to listen?

Is my talent really writing? Can I truly enthrall people as a raconteur? Am I really contributing anything new, or just adding to the endless cacophony of regurgitated tales? What is poetry? Is it really art? Or simply an excess of imagination trapped in a wooden shackle of words?

What else can I do? Reading is an act of consumption, so no amount of talent in it is appreciable to the world at large. I write songs generated loosely from other songs, sans the soul. I attempt to use the world’s trappings to define myself. Is this the Way? Should I define myself by the definitions of others? Am I meant to fit in a hole in society shaped like me?

Why this, either? Is society the same society that makes me feel in my gut that my words are worthless and contemptible, and no amount of pithy attempts to seem “deep” will ever properly express me? Or is that another society, another place? Why, then, do I surround myself with the apathetic and attempt to shield myself with a false sort of cynicism? Is this really the place I belong? Who am I?