I'm flawed.

I could write a book about my shortcomings. Actually, I have. It's called a diary I kept mostly for 40 years. Some of it is boringly confessional, stuff you might tell a shrink, but there are parts that are coruscating, things I wouldn't believe I wrote except for the fact it's in my own handwriting.

I believe in The Muse, I believe there are powers greater than us who use us to transcribe certain truths that tell us who we actually are, not the metrics society uses to compute our worth. What we are, our worth, vastly transcends where we live, our bank accounts, jobs, organizational memberships.

"Chris Hayes wrote a great book in 2010, part of which focused on what he called "cognitive capture": namely, anyone who enters a large institution of power (corporate or state) will, he argued, inevitably adopt its mindset and perspective, and will morph into a servant of it."

Do not entertain these theories. Believe in your gut instincts. Believe in yourself.