What you see, is so much more.

I, and a few others, transferred to Ms. Mullen's class the day before she was going to give out the test in 7th grade. She said if the new students wanted they could take it for extra credit. I sat at home, took my biology book, and read the chapter twice that evening. I woke up and read it again. It was lunch. I stayed in an empty classroom and read the chapter again, outloud, just like the other three times. I was 2 points away from an A. Out of 30 something people who've been studying the same subject for 2 months, I managed to get a better score than most of those people within one evening and one morning.

It was sophomore year when we had to write a poem. I threw a bunch of 4 letter words together, with rhymes bluntly stabbed in places, hoping that they would work. I remember looking at my end product. I remember not feeling so great about it when I turned it in. The big deal wasn't that I made a terrible poem, it wasn't, in fact there was probably no way I could've done poorly on it. It was a poem. However, the problem was, that I thought I was so much more better.

I spent my whole freshmen year doing whatever I could to beat Shawn in Cross Country. Why, because I thought I was so much more better, and after pretty much one third of the season, I did. I just wanted to be better. I just wanted to be more. After my poorly composed poem I threw myself in the corner of every local library and dissected poetry from John Keats, Robert Browning, Pablo Neruda, Emily Dickinson. I read several books on the art of producing poetry. How to books. Vocabulary books. Poetry for Dummies. Vocabulary for Dummies. I would attempt to read The Count of Monte Cristo and never get passed the first few chapters because all I cared about was looking up every single word that I did not know. I read chapters on assonance, the use of repeating vowel sounds. Onomatopoeia. Paradoxes. Stuff no normal teenager with a life would actually embark on finding out unless they really had to. I, on the other hand, had no life.

After a long long intimate timid relationship with words, I gradually, but not easily, eased off of it. I remember reading my classmates essay one day. We were reading essays out loud and after I read a certain sentence, I asked her if she noticed that it rhymed with itself. I said the sentence outloud again. I don't remember the sentence, but I remember that one of the words that rhymed was "pregnancy."

It wasn't until 2 years ago when I took a college poetry class, that I finally realized that I was reading mostly all poetry wrong; pausing after each line as if it were a sentence when there was no rhyme scheme. My class of pencil pushing, eyeglass wearing, tight pants conformed classmates looked down on me as the "untalented jock." I still remember everyone's face, I still remember my teacher's face, when I pointed out the reoccurring sounds in a poem, and called it assonance. Everyone's face flooded with confusion.

I wasn't stupid. I was never stupid to begin with. Somehow how I just come off that way.

After I watched Mystery talk on Conan O'Brien. I drove to Barnes and Nobles everyday and read The Mystery Method, along with several books about etiquette. After Mystery Method, it was The Game. After The Game, after reading a lot of Classic Writings, I was supposed to read Sinn's Speed Seduction. But, someone showed me Magic Bullets, The Routines Manual, How to make friends and influence people. I never had time to write field reports. I never saw my early successes as much of anything. I only saw them as assignments.

There are things I failed poorly at. There are things I failed to excel in. Guitar. Starting a business. Getting a minimum wage job. With most of these thing I feel my intelligence hasn't flourished. My potential squandered. And having hyperthyroidism, a disease that increases your metabolism sometimes messing with my nervous system, isn't helping.

Tim Ferris said, "It is often times what you do, not how you do it, that is the determining factor. This is the difference between being effective, doing the right things, and being efficient, doing things well whether or not they're important."

I remember one of my colleagues wrote on his blog years ago that he writes essays for fun as a result to taking so and so's class. I remember because I bet he thought he was a really cool nerd for self validating himself. Well I write essays and no one I know in real time is here to see how smart I am. No one ever knew what I was capable of. Whether it be blowing up a middle school, or writing a stupid essay. Where's my validation? It's nowhere. I'm doing this for myself. That I could be married with the woman I want. The books that I write that I'm happy with. The songs that I compose that say what I meant them to say. And the broad hope that maybe, just maybe, I'm doing something right.