Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his essay Self-Reliance: "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts ... to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another." And even that is written by some one else.  It's starting to seem more and more that whenever I want to communicate an idea, it is better put by someone else.  Often when I read, I find things that I have thought more abstractly myself, and just didn't know how to articulate.  If I have a presentation to give about something I care about, the parts that I feel communicate best what I want to say are in someone else's words.  When I find some well communicated truth, it's wonderful and frustrating at the same time because though it conveys my thoughts, it's not my own.  All I really want out of this blog is to have thoughts of my own.