Some people are cynical about college -  it’s rigid, they say - why is it even needed?

Don’t be confused about college - it’s not a place for creativity. You can’t use an essay to wander restlessly through your imagination - you’ll fail - and fail quickly. Universities are places for conscientious minds.

Conscientiousness - the desire to do the needed well and thoroughly - is the best predictor of success in college, in graduate school, in law, in management and anyplace that has structure and rules.

In science, most progress is incremental. Oh sure, there’s the occasional Einstein who changes everything, but that’s rare. The reason science is so powerful is that it allows regular, educated people to advance knowledge one microstep at a time. Imagine a hundred thousand people microstepping and exchanging knowledge and wow, now we’re zooming.

You don’t want a surgeon in their well lit operating theater to have an inspiration and try something new on you. You want them to apply the state-of-the-art procedure diligently and carefully.

Entrepreneurs and artists don’t always do well in college. Those careers require constant “out of the box” thinking. When a person starts a company, there are no rules, it’s necessary for the entrepreneur to make things work on the fly. Artists are almost required to break or create new rules. Conscientiousness certainly plays a part in those fields but it’s not the main predictor of success.

Creativity is necessary - every company needs a small group of people generating new ideas but it’s a high risk, high reward game. Few new ideas pan out - the odds that your idea will be unique, practical, affordable and reach the marketplace at exactly the right time to be successful are astronomically low.

Someone who wants to - who feels they have to be creative - is almost cursed. Yes, it’s ironic that I’m publishing this on a poetry site - but in most cases creative people fail - it’s much better for the average someone to be practical. Practical people are generally more successful in life although the rare creative can be extremely successful (Musk, Jobs, Gates).

Colleges teach how our world works - a simulacrum of what is currently known - in hopes that the student will be able, one day, to ask the next question - the one that will push their particular science ahead that one microstep and move us all into the bright future.

With the flicker of your wrist, pen live at hand.
Academia once again applauds and stands
The ovation unawaited, unexpected, Unabated, unresisted,
As the world before your knees bends.

The gray shroud of insecurity is tormenting  you,
Coalescing with the muse that gives you life
You’re duality,
You are human and then monster,
Nothing more than rampant beauty in your lines.

Appreciated never were you while you could be,
Torrid romance brought you happiness and strife.
Yet, you never stopped for death although he kindly did for you,
And felt a funeral in your brain come back alive.

You tell the truth, although a bit slant,  to succeed,
Your life has stood - a loaded gun straight at your head
And though success is counted sweetest when you least have seen him come,
A man’s entitled to take pride in all he has.

You say your enemy is the demon in your head,
A restless pen and *** of pearly sheets,
The manuscript of a novel never read,
Instead you leave plastered your heart in poetry.

I wrote that to you..

from the waiting room of my eye doctor
but I didn't know it sent. I was grinding on my jeep Sunday
and got a piece of metal in my eye the size of a farm tractor,

    but all is well after this second visit  👀

A couple of reasons for the multiple accounts..
Originally started as my way of satiring the many people
on the site that use multiple accounts to put likes and
comments on their own work in order to make it trend..
or even make the 'daily'..
or to stroke themselves  with compliments
so horrendously..  uh, dishonestly.
But me being the battle-hardened, ******* nonconform
that I am, the first time I commented on my own piece,
my own account made fun of myself
to such a degree..
   it ended up in a fistfight--
But it was me..  just ******* up
the whole trolling process.
I always tell the ones that I care
about  who all is 'me'.
I also phase popular ones of mine  out  
      and replace them with new ones  
          if that one is getting too noticed on the site.

That way I don't garner too many followers, which I believe
quenches one's freedom that is lost within the  obligatory
'give and take' mindset that is a cancer  on this
and so many other online writing sites.

Vogel started talking to you when I was no longer
scared of how quickly you got in with me.
I talk like crazy when someone like you gets in to the inner-core
of me so easily..  just by being the way that you are.
The babbling provides a canopy of structure..  Love's structure.
Strange, I know..  but I don't like being scared.
Its a boundary-thing..
and there is so little about ones like you
that even remotely slows down
the process of getting in..

and   I'm-a..  uh..
"I'm a loner, Dottie.. a rebel.."
~Peewee Herman

yeah.. that.

The accounts keep me safe from the
general public  by bringing
pieces of me out, relationally onto the screen  as a way of
providing for myself, the warm cover of love's structure--

   me..  with me.
All so very strange sounding, I'm sure.

I really enjoy watching you, kid.
I'm so sorry for bombing you with all those wordy messages
when we met. Your unique heart, mind, and spirit
are everything perfect in my eyes..  yes..  even with all of your
current broken,  fragmented pieces.
You were recently maybe under some form of a psyche-hold,
which is probably where the psyche eval came from.
Some in the mental health field care deeply..  many are just
going through the motions-- originally thinking it was
for them, and then finding out what the true cost
of love really is,  before slinking back into a foot-shuffling
process..   even as psychologists,  
and often  even medical psychiatrists (prescribers)--

    Who love to find a name for things so they can 'expertly'
    enter into relationship with what now has a name,
    rather than the deeply-hurting person.

Everybody wants the ****, beautiful-voiced girl who stands
a very good chance of making her mark so well in this world.
I would trade access to the 'best' part of it all with you,  
just to have the chance to be with you,  for even 5 minutes  
on that **** and tear-soaked, psyche room floor.

That is where I want to be.

My multiple "friends" keep me free..
unencumbered..  deeply-loved..
  .. ready.  
Broken-down, and pitch-black within the darkness of all its
despair. That is where it is that I would trade all things for,
    in order to be..
with you..  deep in to the very   r e a l   of  it  all..
if you ever fell down that temporarily far.

Everything I do is for that moment.  
My "friends" give me strength.  They believe in me
because I so deeply believe in my loved self.

       Hence, the ability to go anywhere
       you may one day have to go.


       Sorry, kid.. but you asked.

a
   poem
      hides a
     secret within a
    letter or placing of
     a word look carefully
           and intent-fully
                   a secret you may have
                heard examine it ever closely
                       what’s preferred
                  or inferred if you
         open read it slowly
     it may fly out
like a
bird

As poets, we silently scream within the poems that we write, the fervent words permanently soaking into the universe
The universe absorbing the reality of their meaning, even if we ourselves may not fully understand yet
In every piece of art, the inner soul is revealing a part of itself
Big or small, it is there, making its presence known
I find this to be very beautiful

Why so many people imitate
the same popular things
that people did
and the one reason
I only get that they want to become
as popular as them,
and here I am writing
that they don't know,
or vice versa.

Is that called creativity?