Difficila Pensa Non Semper Optimae Res Facere Sunt

Difficult Tasks Are Not Always the Best Things to Do.

I got 76% on my Ontology paper but 93% on my Lit one. Yet, my focus if I choose to go on with philosophy will be on reality, modality, existentialism and gender roles.
I have published one short story in all my years, no novels at all, but my poetry seems to be a big hit.
Why? Why is it that I feel the need to strive to succeed at things I'm obviously less talented at? Why don't I publish poem after poem. Get a degree in Literature and teach new kids the difference between who and whom for the rest of my life? What is this need I have to prove I can do what I see other people doing, even when I am inherently bad at it?

Because I find them rewarding, I suppose. The fact that I'll never publish a story doesn't mean that I'm not proud to have written them. I wrote two novels, how many people that you meet say that? And even though I'll probably graduate with too low an average to get into a Master's program, I will still be able to say I have a degree in Philosophy and my favourite writers are Russell and Kripke, not Atwood and Shakespeare.
More accurately, though, my poetry doesn't say anything about me or the way I think. It is a series of words put down on paper to express a single thought at a single moment. There is no deep meaning to anything I do that I succeed at.  It's only in my failure that you see what I actually am.

Is that a human trait, I wonder? Or is it Middle Child Syndrome? My sister is ridiculously gifted in artistic endeavours; she understands literature and cares about it in a way I never will. I do not like to read literature. Hell, I'm not a fan of poetry. To succeed with something I don't like seems cheap to me, a cop out. And I don't think there actually is a philosophical stance to most literature. There's a point, certainly, often a moral. But the moral rarely has anything to do with the Philosophy of Ethics--it's usually a nice way of convincing people to either keep their heads down and do what's best for the community or to think for themselves and make sure to do what they think is best. Anyone else notice the dichotomy? Yeah, me too. Morality is for philosophers that don't care why the sky is blue, as long as we can all see it.
(On that topic, the double rainbow meme is my favourite one ever. What does it mean? Isn't it nice to ask?) I don't want to do the easy thing and have an easy grey life. I want to be stimulated and frustrated and have someone tell me I'm an idiot for saying something that another person praises. I don't have anything to contribute to philosophy that someone smarter than me, and more able to express themselves, can contribute. But Imma ride one their coattails 'til they get wise to my attention-seeking ways.