Genius, Obviously!

When you’ve made it and are being touted a genius, everyone says, “It’s so obvious (s)he made it, (s)he is after all a genius!” But you’ll remember the same fuckers said something completely different when you were busting your ass, putting in time and sweat, sacrificing social life, making sleepless nights a habit, showing up on time (hat tip to Woody Allen), or practicing your craft.

When you’ve made it and are being touted a genius, you remember the moments before you achieved the status of a ‘genius’ as filled with nightmarish moments of self-doubt, insecurities eating at your toes, self-consciousness gnawing at your stomach. And they thought you were a fucking idiot for thinking you could make it with your own vision and not their version of it.

When you’ve made it and are being branded a success, they all circle around you with that look, smiling like whores. When they clap for you, say ‘congrats’ to you, or say ‘good job’ as if you’re a lap dog who successfully learned his first trick with the tennis ball, or say “I knew you had it in you, buddy”….sigh….you know how badly you want to slap their happy-spiced faces. You just want to get up and yell…’Fuck you, you fucking motherfuckers!’

Point is, my friends: If the voice inside you is aching to come out and say it like it is, like you’d like it to, like it makes sense to you, like it feels good to you…you have to believe, believe, believe in yourself and be that person. At every corner there’s someone to reject your voice. The difference between a genius and a mental (to others) is recognition by success. So don’t go for that success first because it’s someone else’s success framed and hung on the wall. They always hang the second frame a little lower than the first one.

Genius, obviously, is not what you’d like to be branded as. Because they almost make it sound like you’ve achieved something you don’t deserve.

And they do it for obvious reasons; they’ll never have what you have.