INFLUENCE.

i wish i could say that i was creative. that i had innovative ideas or groundbreaking thoughts. but i don't. i feed off of other people's ideas and thoughts and end up with something of my own that resembles a bunch of other people's ideas complied into one thing that some people look at and go 'wow, that's different.'

but it's not, really. it's not different, or new, or creative. it's just a mixture. a compilation of what other people have thought of and done tossed into the same brain (maybe with a few new ideas, too, sure) and then spit back out. but it's not like anything else so it gets christened interesting. new. creative. even thought it's not.

and i feel bad. because i can look back at anything i have produced and see the influences that go into it. that this idea was so-and-so's with so-and-so's twist to it. it's not mine, it's borrowed. it's someone else's idea put with something else so that it resembles something new.

but then, i realize, that it's who i am.

i'm not 'original.' i'm not a unique person, not really. i'm a unique person in that no one else has been influenced by the people that i have been. no one else has lived like me and thus taken things from the people i steal from. no one knows that my style of writing comes from about three different people, more, actually, if you can realize that it's "me" talking and my personality is stolen from many. i feel like i am a collage of the people that float in and out of my life. that some of these people become too much of an influence on me so it's hard for me to separate me from them. and i don't think that thats a good thing.

i don't like that i'm made up of different people because if that's true i don't know who i am. if i'll change when i'm around a new set of people. i want to be strong in who i am but i don't know who that is. how many people that is.

so i'm not creative. i'm not new or innovative or anything of the sort. i'm resourceful. and maybe that will come in handy one day.