Prompt: Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

Okay guys, I've got some news for you. No one is as 'different' as they think they are. Out there, there are millions of people with the very same traits you think make you unique. And in striving to be 'different', we very often simply fall into another defined category - remember how you demonstrated your 'difference' as a teen by joining a youth subculture and subscribing to its predefined physical code and attitude? And just how different do you really want to be anyway? Different isn't automatically beautiful. Different can be very ugly and drag with it a whole set of problems, prejudices and hurts. Growing up gay taught me that, and being gay is only 'different' because other people make it that way.

I don't want to be different. I just want to be special. It's not the same thing at all.

Things that make me beautiful: I love unreservedly but am aloof with strangers; I daydream when I should be working and get excited over small pleasures; I'm vain but shy and introverted, am fierce in defense of my personal space and prefer animals to people. I am reputed to be closely related to a cat. I don't light people up, but I sometimes amuse and please them.

I am not different, just unique.

Just in case you can't tell, I'll admit I didn't like today's prompt. Maybe it's the phrasing rather than the intent, but I found it subtly self-satisfied and irritating. But I guess that's one of the challenges of something like Reverb 10 where you're not choosing your own topics to muse on - you're going to get some prompts that you simply can't personally relate to. Moving along now.