For many years I had self-esteem problems. It’s a pretty common thing, especially for geeks, so I don’t feel so bad about admitting it anymore.
Since leaving high school in 1999 I’ve tried to overcome the self-esteem issues. I had a breakthrough almost 4 years ago when recovering from a bad breakup, for a couple months I spent time focusing on how great I am, and built my self esteem up to a point to which I could finally be passed off as normal. This change in self-esteem has touched all aspects of my life and relationships, and in the past couple years I’ve gone even further, and today I can easily say that I’m very proud of myself and happy with how I’ve “turned out” in life so far.
There are some things that I can’t seem to convince myself of, like that I am good at writing. I touched upon this briefly in an entry a couple weeks ago, when a publishing house representative told me I had a talent for writing. Just today a friend of mine read over a report I’m putting together and said “you definately have a flair for writing!”
But it’s not getting through. Every time I read something I’ve written I think “wow this sucks, I can’t write.” I get nervous about my grammar, my spelling, run-on sentences, being coherent, using words like “so” and “anyway” and parenthesis too much.
I think this stems from when I was very young. I was always very good at puzzles, so in Kindergarden teachers thought I would do very well in school, but when I got into first grade I had trouble learning to read and my parents were told that I had dyslexia. This didn’t come as too much of a shock, because both my parents are dyslexic, and they were just happy that I was in a good school that could treat it properly. Until I was in 3rd grade I was in special ed classes, and then they declared that they had done as much as they could for me and let me go back with the rest of my class. I do admit they had done a good job, but I forever did lousy in english. I always thought I sucked at anything related to writing.
So (There I go again! Using “so” all the time! And now parenthesis! Arg!) I’m trying to find ways to overcome this loathing of my own writing. Looking back at some of my journal entries from 2002 has helped, I’ve definately improved since then. But what else can I do to convince myself I don’t suck? And why is my brain being so bad about accepting this?
Michael made a fire downstairs, going to snuggle by it and read for a bit now.