I hate to be horribly cliched and quote one of Kerouac's most oft-cited snippets, but sometimes there's nothing else that sums it up quite right.

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes "AWWW!"

I am a contradiction in terms.

My biggest fault is that I possess a ridiculous amount of self-doubt; I often feel that there's little I'm going to be able to bring to a conversation led by someone clearly brilliant/witty/poised. Yet at the same time, they are the people above all others with whom I hope to interact.

My eyes light up during the first interactions with someone who possesses those qualities, because I realize I'm going to have to work my ass off to keep up. To prove myself, if you will.

Biting wit and brilliance do not come naturally to me. I can be dippy, I can possess a glaring lack of common sense. I often think of things after the fact that would have been fantastic to say in a conversation, quips that never see the light of day because my mind sometimes just doesn't work quickly enough to keep up.

But I still think of them and I store them for next time. See, much as I doubt myself, I love a challenge.

It is, in many respects, why I wind up keeping quiet much of the time. The people who know me well love me, regardless of the fact that they all know I'm an idiot. And I'm comfortable with that. So an idiot I am - although I like to think I'm more of an idiot savant.

The brightest (insert "coolest" if you think it applicable) person I've ever met kept me on my toes the entire damn time I was in his presence. It was a fascinating experience to me, and I trilled silently to myself when it appeared that what I had to say about things mattered to him. We were rivals, technically, each vying for the top prize in a competition. But we bypassed the heated competition aspect of things and instead focused on the intellectual stimulation such a competition could provide.

Well, when we weren't playfully bickering like little kids. Heh.

I never really thought of him as a rival until they announced the name of the competition's winner.

(For those inquisitive minds, he won and I was runner-up. Bastard.)

But even when away from the competition itself, I found myself striving to be interesting enough, bright enough, witty enough and knowledgable enough. And each time I did so, I discovered that he could keep up with me. Easily. And I'd like to think that I was able to do the same during his attempts at insight.

We've kept in touch sporadically, and during a instant messaged conversation a few months ago, he mentioned that he thought we should start a blog together, with commentary and observations about news, live, whatever.

We never did it - both of us were too busy and it fell through the cracks.

But I had a huge grin spread across my face for a good solid two days afterwards.

I recently received an e-mail from someone that instantly left me impressed and a little awed.

And I realized that this person was brilliant. That I definitely wanted to find out what makes her tick. I could learn from her.

And that I was going to have to work my ass off to keep up.