"You Must Be Really Smart!"

Lately, I have been acquiring an insurmountable amount of compliments from every direction due to my daily essaying endeavours. Apart from the fact that I am content with receiving some form of compliments per se, I am stricken with some amount of annoyance at the sorts of compliments I get.

The most annoying of which is, "wow, you must be really smart!" How exactly can writing one's daily thoughts for everyone to read deem one smart? My essays may show my level of punctuation, grammar and my ability to conform to certain structures and to maintain a certain argument, but they certainly do not prove to anyone my intelligence. If they did, then I would probably be studying somewhere much more fancier than the institution in which I currently study. 

If my essays displayed my intelligence level as "smart", then I would not even need to study. I would not need to strain myself in the duration of both semesters in order to achieve scores high enough to please me. I would not even bother travelling to and fro university, nor would I bother paying car park fees in order to be able to stay there at all. I would not even have a student loan to pay off. I would be "smart" enough to live in some intelligent way that I would just happen to conjure up.

By telling me that I "must be really smart", these people are placing themselves below me. They are making what I am doing seem like it is some impossible task. It is not. And I do not exceed anybody in any way. I, instead, choose to partake in the sharing of my innermost self through daily scribblings so as to relieve myself of intense thoughts at times where I should be sleeping, to leave a little imprint of mine in the world, to connect with those who my imprint reaches, and to prepare myself for the strenuous task of novel writing. 

I do not intend to place myself above any individual. I do not condone the placing of myself above any individual either. I believe that everyone has something that they excel in, but that does not mean that they deserve to be treated better than another. I simply do what it is that I do for the same underlying reason that you do whatever it is that you do - for self-enjoyment, self-expression, for the relieving of boredom, for the sharing of ideas, for existing and creating and thriving. Any one talent should not undermine the talent of another.

It also appears as though people have forgotten that I am someone other than the person who writes an essay a day. There is a lot more to me. I shall not allow myself to be categorised as one being, for I thrive as many. I thrive in the department of the arts - performance, creative, illustrative, decorative. I thrive in the department of literature - reading, writing, editing. I thrive within words as well as colours, but limit me not to those two departments! For I am ever evolving, ever learning and ever aspiring. One aspect of this evolution is my newfound interest in the continuous writing of essays, but that is not to say that it is my main one!

I am a conglomeration of many things. I will not allow anybody to limit me to merely one. I am multi-faceted, ever learning, ever changing.