Oh Spring! Where is your sense of humor?

I'm heartbroken when my friend said that there is a bit of arrogance in my writing, not to mention I thrive on self-indulgence and pretentiousness. She is right, but I don't mean to be like that. Maybe it is just my insecurity manifesting by virtue of being verbose and overbearing. Nonetheless, I really do love writing. Do I have what it takes? Do I need to change my ways? What should I work on? Help me by judging some of the pieces that I have written while bored:

(I am not in school right now, so I am not receiving any guidance or support from teachers, writers and like-minded people. So I apologize for this sudden diatribe...)

"The temperature plummeted down into bitter coldness in a matter of a few hours just a few days ago. Those who were jogging in short shorts in nearby parks, their simple activity, that of which involved appreciating the supposed upcoming arrival of Spring, had been misled. Rather funny, yes, but not so fast, Winter, April Fool's Day does not belong in any of your months. Same sympathy goes for those not in bulky jackets, and in mere chunky sweaters: they were devastated by this sudden change of Mother Nature's attitude. Why is she allowing Winter's indecisiveness to go on for so long? How cold she is, just like him. The birds are being kept at bay. Where are they, when they should be flying over our heads, celebrating the fruition of all things? Where are they, when they should be singing sweetness into our ears, to accompany the equally sweet smelling victory that comes from Spring surviving through what has been an excruciatingly and painfully sluggish and muddling experience, proposed by Winter, whose cruelty has not rested in his obvious specialty for being deathly Arctic cold, but in his inconsistency, his aimlessness, this year, just as lost and confused as this writer: could not figure out the exact temperature; hence oscillating from being bitingly cold to surprisingly mildly warm, and vice-versa; could not, for the life of him, decide what to do with the rest of his life.

Oh Spring! Where is your sense of humor? Your gay flamboyancy? Your child-like innocence? Your wide-eyed boy wonderment? When will I be able to stroll down the path flanked by hydrangeas and chrysanthemums and falling ginkgo leaves that gently cascade toward soft, mouldy grounds whose earth have known many steps that have walked with purposeful direction, or carefree aimlessness without any plans, but all just the same, curious, happy, with so much to learn, so much to discover, as the snow melts and the cold dissipates, peeling an outer layer from atop of another layer, leaving a world within its same structure, its same countenance, its same state, but it is a different world, seen, felt, heard, smelled, touched without a need for thumping heavy boots slushing through heavy snow or bulky jackets and woolly toques and choking scarves that cover our eyes, ears, nose and skins. Come come come and we will wash ourselves on the beaches.

Oh Winter, how vain, selfish, cruel. One is sorry that things have died in your arms, and that you have faced disillusionment and apathy, and how you serve as the breeding ground for death and disappointment and how time, which begins innocuously, along with you, prolongs the pain and misery by simply dragging out one state, one emotion, one feeling, one shade of colour: cold, lonely, withering, monotone, grey. How you wish people understand you; how you want them to mourn with you, but there is a time when we should move on and just let go. You are alone, and will always be, and one, brave and intelligent enough, thrives on your solitariness, your introspection, your darkness, but loving you is too dangerous, as we can only wither and die for too long. We need and want you, but death and rebirth encompass a continuing rolling of the wheel, not a suspended transfixed one."

Another one:

"My pen writes, in fine point black ink, in elegant, simple strokes
I can change the world, with my ideas.
And I don't have to get up from bed.
The sword, however, gallant, and phallic,
is bigger and practical. And very sharp.
It will behead me, and rip my writings into shreds.
Then my blood will intermingle with black tears from the oozing pen,
as I will not have the time to cry and lament,
as my pen, that does not write anymore, will mourn for me."

And another one:

"How are we be able to figure out and master the intricate and subtle ways of graceful and sophisticated social interactions if we are not open to the idea of humiliating ourselves, willingly or otherwise, in front of the the self-defined popular and glamorous people? How are we going to be able to speak fluent French if we do not want to entertain the idea of getting lost, thirsty and hungry and sleepy, in a bustling Montreal, or better yet, Parisian streets? How do we know how to cook anything that does not involve pushing microwave buttons until we leave the comforting vicinities of our homes, especially our moms in the kitchen? Are we not capable of cultivating and maintaining great friendships until we have betrayed a friend, or have been betrayed by someone whom we had trusted? Do we become great communicators and eloquent speakers from spending our time on Facebook or talking and texting on our cellphones, or from taking the time to actually see and talk to people personally, warts and all? How do I become a better person when all I do is dream, long and wish? Or do I really become the person I want to be, or made to be, by disciplining myself via good habits, patience, and hard work that might be excruciating after a long period of erratic emotionality, apathy, and mental inactivity? Is it still possible to write a book when the literary experiences only come from the confinements of the leather-bound classics in a musty library, or do we gleam real and profound insights from, let's say, living in the slums in India, or having a tumultuous romance with your vaguely homosexual boss twice your age only to have your heart broken in a mere second? Do I simply read Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein, to name a few, to acquire a sense of what it means to lead an ethically good and genuinely happy life? Or is it from accepting disappointments, loneliness, misery, tragedy, death, and a Godless, empty existence as the reality of life, do I paradoxically garner a sense of worth, purposefulness and drive to find meaning and possibly genuine happiness?"

Last one, I promise:

"To what extent does one need to show his devotion for the one he loves, either openly or stealthily, in order to finally be loved in return? To what level of suffering does one has to be taken to, in order to finally realize that the one he loves is probably, or even bluntly, will never ever return the brief glances that are being thrown at him secretly across the room? One lets go, and needs to, in order to pick up the fragments of his shattered heart on the floor. Still, how cruel: to do even more manual labour, and even more so as it is without pay, when one only wants to be loved in return."

To begin, men, or women with the name john, shouldn't use a word as strong as heartbroken to describe their mental state. Disappointed, sure. Heartbroken I could understand if that was your girl/man (it seems) or something and he described you as all those things before he said he no longer wanted to see you. So the way I see it, it appears you are asking in a writing forum, something for which you should seek the consultation of a psychiatrist if you think it warrants it or the good help of someone who knows you personally.

Second, your heart may be racked by the emptiness, by the word you uttered up there, however, you cannot extend that misfortune to be reality. You can accept that grass is blue, but in no uncertain terms, the grass is still luscious green.

Asking help for your writing is a guise that you conceived to conceal the purpose of what you are asking. It sounds like you have some personal problems that you need to work through.

I'm not qualified to offer you advice that you should take unequivocally, but I think referring back to the insecurity that you mentioned, you have some issues with self-worth. We all need to feel that we matter to someone; it's the feeling that drives us to seek out relationships with other people. Having contempt for other people might be a defense mechanism to deplore what you feel is their callousness. So you seek to build this image of yourself, this impenetrable building.

The building has several dimensions that serve your individual needs. Its height is to show that it is self-reliant and successful and to fill the second need; to draw attention and respect and admiration. Its brick is to protect anyone from seeing through it and exposing the structure for what it really is, a vulnerable house of cards that could fall over.

You have in my opinion, two fundamentally distinct routes that you can take to alleviate your problem.

One is to address the problem, which I think is your issue with self-worth. Believe it or not, we each add something to this world, not because of what we can do, or because of our crude, sanitized abilities, but just because of who we are.

Some people only feel satisfaction from doing something which they are good at.

That's more inclined to the second, far more precarious route of deception, namely self-deception. In order for this to work, you must convince yourself of your importance. How can you do that? You must have people constantly telling you that you are important. In crude form, the overbearingness and pretentiousness is an innate function of this.

However, if you don't refine these feelings into something of a useful form, you risk letting people see you as a bitter, cold, and distant person.

So refine those raw feelings into something which can foster their well-being and also protect them. If you are a doctor, people might say you are entitled to sneer at whomever you want. You can put on this pretense that you are cold and unfeeling, which helps make you feel strong, masks your incredible need for affection, and at the same elicit respect and admiration from others, by being someone who serves a vital function in the community.

As you briefly mentioned Socrates above, you might be aware that he said the following:

"Be as you wish to seem" That's open to your interpretation of it.

Whatever you do, pick a route, #1 or 2, and remain resolute.

Ha ha, don't listen to Mustafa! He is mean!! :) No, that is not true... I see he put a lot of thought into the feedback he gave. Anyway, you asked for honest feedback, and I have noticed that the best honest feedback we have here comes from Mustafa.

For your writing, you certainly must be aware that you have a talent. When your friend said it seemed self-indulgent, it probably hurt, because writing is something you know you do well. The complexity of your sentence structure, the interjected phrases that mix it up like funky percussion, the imagery -- you have a large army of language under your control, so now you should study military strategy:

First, what is your purpose? Even though this writing is good, it is writing for the sake of writing, and that makes it less valuable and interesting than, say, if you were writing for a clear purpose. Whatever your purpose in writing turns out to be, I think you do have "what it takes."

Read Strunk and White
Read Stephen King's On Writing
Learn about neuro-linguistic programming (that is what I recently discovered, and I recommend it to many people who seem to be talented at writing.

So, is this self-indulgent? I guess if you are writing without purpose, you are indeed indulging in it. But that is not a bad thing. When your writing strikes other people as self-indulgent, it means that you seem to be being fancy for the sake of being fancy, sort of like showing off.

Stephen King DOES write for the sake of writing, but he is not fancy. I can't explain it, but I know that if you are serious about solving the self-indulgence mystery (something all good writers go through) read that book by King.

Arrogance is merely the honesty of superior people, and writing anything creative is always a supreme act of self-indulgence, for anyone. Your writing is good -- your prose is full of vivid description and your poem is actually poetic, using metaphors and playing with adages. Your writing does mostly seem to center around the theme of dangerous/hidden/unrequited love, though, which could get a bit wearing for a constant reader after awhile (and not very long, at that). It is also the sort of theme that, if it keeps recurring in your work, might lead readers to feel that you were being just a teeny bit more self-indulgent than writers normally are. It might be a good idea to try writing a piece or two on some other themes, just to expand your range a tad. In any event, keep on writing -- you definitely have talent.

Wow, that is some impressive advice. I had to take a minute to acknowledge that Sean gave some excellent words of wisdom here, and I certainly benefited from it.