Just so frickin' dejected. Thanks for acknowledging my existence.

I'm too fucking humble.

I feel like a jerk when I talk about any of my work. Whether it be writing, drawing, music, photography, et cetera. I feel that even mentioning it is a form of bragging. I feel like I'm currently bragging. I feel like a jerk for even referring to myself as humble, because I feel like only pretentious snobs like to think that they're humble.

For the above reasons, I'm a nobody.

I'll only talk about my things if someone else brings it up first. But if I never talk about any of it to begin with, then nobody knows, so no one can bring it up, so I melt into the background as the unimportant one whom nobody cares to learn a thing about, so I'll never be "discovered" in any line of work, thus I'll be a lonely and miserable artist for the entirety of my lifetime.

And according to my orchestra conductor, not talking about it also means that I don't have a passion for it.

I'm so fucking hurt and angry.

I began composing orchestrated pieces last year, and I presented one to my conductor as an experiment. The very next day, a kid -- he was a freshman at the time -- presented one that he had "written". I place this word in parentheses because he technically didn't write anything. Instead, he created an arrangement of popular themes from movies and video games. Don't get me wrong, that still takes talent. It's difficult to hear something and be able to dissect every individual part like that.

I will be referring to this boy under the pseudonym "Kyle".

Now, my conductor said that he'd be interested to hear what I'd do with my piece over the summer, as this all occurred near the end of the school year. He said that we could play it for this year's spring concert, which is normally when we perform student-written pieces. There tends to be at least one every year.

Instead of continuing to work on the first piece, I began an entirely new one. I've been working on it for the past five months, and I'm still building onto it. I'm at 179 measures, right now.

I came to my conductor -- I'm just gonna call him "Mr. J" -- at the beginning of this school year and told him that I'd been working on a new project and I asked if he'd like to hear what I had so far. He told me that he didn't want to concern himself with student pieces so early on in the year, and then mentioned that he'd given Kyle a deadline to finish the piece that he has decided to write for us to perform in the spring concert.

Suddenly, it's all fucking about Kyle. Kyle is motherfucking God to Mr. J, just because the kid started taking music theory classes. And whatever happened to not wanting to concern yourself with student pieces right now? Clearly, Mr. J has already listened to what Kyle's working on, and he doesn't give a shit about me anymore.

At least once a week, Mr. J mentions something like, "If everything goes smoothly, we'll be playing one of Kyle's pieces for the spring concert."

"Oh, Kyle, is that a dedicated piano part? It's such a good idea."

"Kyle's gonna be a music composer when he grows up, I can just see it. He has such a passion for it."

"You know, you can start studying music composition in community college courses, Kyle. You just have so much potential."

I am near my breaking point. I swear to god, if he says one more thing about how fucking perfect and talented Kyle is, I'm going to break down crying.

And you know why Kyle is getting this disgusting amount of praise and recognition? It's because he talks about his work and asserts himself as a composer. The kid takes every opportunity to bring up something that he learned in music theory, or something that he likes about a piece that we're playing and so he wants to incorporate that style into his own piece, and all this bullshit that I really just need him to shut up about if I want to maintain my sanity.

And I never want to feel like I'm bragging like that. I can't bring myself to do it, but I know that that's what it takes to get recognized.

It just hurts so bad that I've been forgotten. It feels like Mr. J think I have no potential and it isn't worth it to put any effort into me. Now I'm afraid that I won't even be concertmaster, next year. I mean, I'm third chair now, and the two chairs before me are both seniors. That leaves me to take the wheel. But I'm scared that he doesn't think I could handle that responsibility. The only compliment he's ever given me is that I'm a "passionate violinist". Whereas, with so many other students, he's described what he likes about the way they play, calls them incredibly talented, says that they do a specific thing so well and he loves that about them. I get "passionate". And you can be passionate without being good.

I've worked so hard, but nobody seems to care. And this just means so much to me, because I've almost entirely lost the ability to write and draw. I just can't do it anymore. I have a clouded mind and absolutely no inspiration. Composing is all I've been able to do, and it's all I've been doing for months on end. Now it just feels like a waste of my time.

The senior prodigy musician and composer whom I've fallen far too hard for tells me that I'm a musical genius. He is the only one who is genuinely interested and impressed. I wonder if he knows just how much that means to me.

I understand if no one read all the way through, and if no one reaches the end to even notice this, and I don't have a decent excuse for what I'm about to do. So I'm just going to get this over with.

Here's the piece that I presented to Mr. J last year. Mind you, I wrote it in less than a week on a manic high. It's choppy.

And here's the piece that I've been working on recently. I like it a lot and it's so much more well put together than the first one. It's based off of a lot of the same ideas, though. I've been very careful with this one, but I'm still not satisfied.

Obviously these aren't actual recordings, just electronic soundfonts.

Ugh. I'm sorry. I don't know why, but I am.