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I know you probably think you’re a good writer, and I’m sure that your skills are above average, but metaphors are really not your friend. They aren’t! Not even a fiction author uses that many metaphors in a single paragraph. Someone mentioned this before, but there’s a line between eloquence and overdoing it.</p>
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You obviously seem to enjoy writing, though, and a “life of the mind.” I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to make a living that way. You can be a great writer, or a great politician, or a great professor in any of the assorted fields of the humanities.</p>
<p>As for all the criticism of “navel-gazing,” as Conan O’Brien noted in his speech to Harvard, one very common personality trait shared by Ivy League grads is not so much a desire to succeed, but rather a deep-seated fear of being unable to achieve great success and thus, in their perception, “failing.”</p>
<p>Since you seem almost obsessed with the idea of achieving greatness, you should read some of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s works. Many of his characters are obsessed with achieving greatness, obsessed with being great like “Napoleon,” yet entire novels are built upon the fact that these characters must struggle with their own mediocrity, despite delusions of grandeur.</p>