I'M A FUCKING GENIUS. BUY ME A DRINK.

So, you think you're pretty talented, huh?

The bad news of course is that you probably aren't. Only one way to prove it, though. Do something talented.

Go on.

Sorry, what's that? You don't really have the time? Work's pretty hectic at the moment. That piece of assessment's coming up. You've got a couple of things you just can't get out of. You're a little too busy.

And somehow you never seem to get around to that great artistic project that you've been carrying around in your head for gods know how long.

Slumming it at a university for around 40 years (or however long it took to get my qualifications) I met a mammoth and wild congregation of artists, poets, writers, cartoonists, painters, playwrights, musicians, actors.

Why then, in my declining years (which will be soon - I don't plan on making it much past 25), when I look back on the halcyon days of my early twenties, will my memories not be of a new renaissance?

Looking back, I should remember a krewe of frightening, deranged aesthetes, reshaping the world and the psyches of all those they encounter - Opening people's minds and overflowing beautiful ideas into them. Confronting them, inspiring them, sickening them. Giving them hope, or making them angry. Offering them catharsis or understanding or gloriously nihilistic self destruction.

That's what I SHOULD remember.

So why is it that instead I will remember a motley, disjointed herd of alcoholics and philosophasters, bright eyes shining over coffee cups and beer mugs, beginning sentences with "You know what I'd like to do..." or "Wouldn't it be cool if...' or "Someone should..." Proselytising strange and new ideas that are lost in the bustle of the next days routine.

Over the past half decade or so, I've met the most amazingly alive people. Mad bad and perverse, a rainbow of diversity and insanity. These staggering creatures spew forth a shocking torrent of deadly and dangerous ideas. But said creative avalanches inevitably begin with "Wouldn't it be cool to..." or "Y'know, I'd like to..." or "One day..."

So, do something.

Think you can write? Write. Fancy yourself something of a singer? Sing. If you're so talented - prove it. Do something talented.

Now, of course your dreams won't all instantaneously be realised. These things take time. You won't be successful right away - maybe never. But if you do nothing - You have nothing. If you do something... well, yeah.

I appreciate that you're busy. But are you really THAT busy? Yes yes - work, assessment, social commitments and so forth. But... How many bad American sitcoms have you watched this week? How may times have you blobbed out in front of some show you're not really watching? How many times have you checked and rechecked your email, or checked upon sites you know haven't been updated - just in case?

With all this, you're telling me that you can't wrestle half an hour from a week?

Surely half an hour isn't enough time to write the Great American Novel? Well, you're right - 30 minutes isn't much time at all. But that just means that it shouldn't be too hard to put it aside.

In half an hour, frankly, you'll get an enormous amount of nothing done. But you'll write a couple of lines, compose a couple of chords, draw a couple of stokes. When you come back to it later, you'll probably want to scrap it as amateurish and ill thought out. But you'll have a base - something to work on, build on. And after a while, you'll have something you can hold up with pride and say "Yeah, I did this."

Yeah, that's not the same as being a writer or an actor, but neither is sleepwalking through your daily routine, drifting off each night with nothing more than the dream of that great artistic endeavor, which you know you're capable of, but which you just never seem to get around to.