There’s a quote by Mark Twain that goes, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

For a long time, I’ve loved this quote and in a way, I’ve hid behind it to give myself the perception that I’m wiser than I actually am. If I were to ask twenty random people I know for adjectives that describe me, I’d probably get things like “wise, intelligent, calm, open-minded, etc. etc.” The thing is though, I don’t think I am actually all those positive things that people think I am. I just seem that way because I don’t express my feelings and opinions all that often. When I do, I make damn sure that what I’m saying is funny, makes sense, or most people can agree on it.

I’ve struggled with this my entire life. I’d much rather keep myself closed to the outside world than let people in. That’s precisely my problem. So you know what? Fuck that quote. Mark Twain might’ve been a brilliant writer and this quote might have helped me along when I was younger, but as I grow older day by day, I’m starting to recognize the value in showing off my true colors.

These days, I think it’s far better to wear my heart upon my sleeve. I’ve kept things inside for so long and I’ve given off the facade that I don’t give that much of a fuck that I think I’ve genuinely internalized this idea. This false idea. But the question that arises now is, “What next?”

I’ve told myself that I don’t want to go through more school, but beyond the fact that homework and menial practice problems and essay prompts annoy the shit out of me, I don’t have a real reason for not doing so. Yes, financials are a problem, and yes, it’s more years of grueling hard work in classes, but those things are things that can be overcome, if I were to put the effort into doing so.

But I don’t want to put in that effort. I’ve never wanted to put in that effort. There’s a TEDTalks by Mel Robbins that I’ve seen a couple times that tells me that I will never want to put in that effort. Psychologically, it’s difficult to get started on something and even harder to keep going when things get tough. All my life, I’ve been a quitter. I have had a losing mentality, of playing not to lose rather than to win. I am, at the very core, afraid to fail.

And yet, I don’t know why. I mean yes, everyone has a degree of risk aversion because they don’t want to lose for a variety of reasons. That’s normal. But as long as I can remember, I’ve always quit when things become difficult. In fifth grade, I played the cello. Who the fuck knows why I chose the cello of all instruments? Maybe because I wanted to be different from the violin/viola players, maybe I thought it was cool to carry around a giant instrument to seem more important. Either way, one year later, I quit. My dad told me after one of the string performances that I wasn’t as good as the others that were playing. So, I quit. I wasn’t naturally good at it, I wasn’t particularly interested in it anymore, so fuck it. I’m done.

Karate classes in sixth or seventh grade. I stuck with it up until the second yellow belt and I participated in a small tournament against other second yellow belts. Out of five people at the particular event I was in, I got 3rd. A couple of weeks later, fuck it, I quit. I’m not good enough. I don’t care enough. I’m done.

Tenth grade, I applied to the school newspaper to write articles, because I was semi-interested in journalism at the time. I got rejected from joining, partly because the teacher who was the sponsor for it saw me sleeping in class practically everyday. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out for it. Did I care enough to pursue it? Nope. I’m done.

Eleventh grade AP English class. I hated that teacher. Nothing I wrote was ever good enough for an A in that class, no matter how many revisions I had done or the amount of effort I put into trying to appease how she wanted things to be written for the AP test. I got C after B after B in that class and she never gave me comments or feedback to let me know exactly why. I couldn’t get higher than a 92 in that class (93 was the cutoff for an A). I ended up getting a 4 on the actual exam, but that teacher infuriated me so much that I gave up taking AP English in twelfth grade, instead opting for the honors class that I knew I would have an easier time with. After that bullshit class, I said I’m done. I quit.

If this sounds like I’m being overly critical of myself or that I’m bitching about the universe not dealing me pocket Aces on every hand, I kind of am. Ever since first grade, I was labelled as “gifted.” I’ve always had this incorrect perception in the back of my mind that I am somehow worth more or am more intelligent than the general population or my fellow peers. I would never admit to that in real life, but there’s always that lingering sprite in my head reminding me that I should be somehow “better.”

Perhaps I should be. Maybe I was put on this earth to do great things, but I’ve never really had the innate desire to do so. People have just told me that. “You’re so smart, you could be a great teacher.” “You should be a writer.” “You should do x, y, and z, you’d be good at it.” I think the problem is, people are great at telling other people what they should be doing. But that’s because they don’t see the inner workings behind it all; we see what people want us to see, albeit occasionally we do see things people don’t want us to see too.

I know deep down that failing is okay. Everybody fails. I lose games of League and I know it’s not the end of the world when I do. I can win more later. I can get up and try again. Failure is not permanent, it’s temporary. I know that. But I’ve always held myself to a higher standard than other people. If other people fail multiple times, I want to get it in one try. If it takes other people a year to do something, I want to finish it in a month. That’s just the kind of backwards, broken mentality I have. But you know what? At the end of the day, no matter what we do, each one of us is going to end up buried underground, sitting on some mantle, or blown away like dust in the wind. Fuck it, I’m done.

I don’t know. I’m just feeling like I have a million of things that I could or should be doing and I’m so stressed about choosing only one of them that I end up not doing anything at all. I’ve always been a “think before I do” kind of person and that’s the real issue here. Having that mindset might be useful for considering what kind of car to buy or the parts that go into a computer, but for real life, for experience? I think I’d much rather be a do-er.