what does it mean to be good at something? what does it mean to be good? for so long i thought i was good at writing but lately i haven’t been sure. i haven’t been sure because a part of me worries that to be good at something, you have to do it often. i worry that to be a good writer, you have to stitch together unconventional words and write sentences that terrify in their length and punch people in the gut with your expressions. but maybe it’s less about creating something novel and more about figuring out how to say something in a novel way. i don’t really know if i’m good at that. i like to think i am. people tell me i am. but lately i worry that it’s all for show. that one day someone is going to cut the cameras or pull the rug out from under my feet and say hahah, we got you. look how silly you look now! how do your clown shoes fit? how does that rainbow face paint and big red nose feel? i don’t know what the fuck i’m saying. that’s the thing. i’m not good at writing crazy abstract things. i’m not good at making up metaphors that knock your socks off. i can’t compare bruises to ugly swans or apples to sunsets or anxiety to eating too many spicy wings. i don’t even like spicy food ! i don’t even like spicy food. all i know how to write about is the same five things i’ve been writing about since i was fifteen years old. i’ll be nineteen in three days and i worry that i no longer know how to write beautiful things. sometimes people will leave the sweetest comments on my writing in reference to specific lines and i will think to myself, that line is based off of something someone once said to me. it didn’t come from my own creativity or intelligence—not really, anyway. i am not special because i did not come up with this special thing that made someone feel special. i am, instead, a thief. i am a thief and i don’t know how to live my life in any other way. all i do is absorb. i’m an old sponge sitting in the glass dish by the kitchen sink, but not really because i’m not good at abstract metaphors. what am i good at? what does it mean to be good at something?