It has been a long time since I have made any additions to this blog. This is because I haven't been in a traumatic state of self-pitying and self-identity analysis since the beginning of last spring. Also, I've been really busy since school started.
I find it funny that the only time I am motivated to write is when I am going through some dramatic emotional upheaval and therefore feel the need to spew all my self analysis out on the computer for the world to see. I'll be thinking of something, usually something about my roller coaster life and my latest epiphany, and I can't wait to get in front of a computer so I can write it all down. Yet, when I am in a content phase of life and I have an idea in my head about an interesting topic that I actually have time to write about, something else is always more alluring. I say I enjoy writing and that I want to do it, yet I never take the time to write in any sort of productive way; I only write for therapy.
So, I was just catching up on my blog reading. There are really only two blogs I follow but I hadn't read either for a long time, so there was a lot of reading to do. Reading my friends' blogs caused me to want to check out my own blog which I haven't checked since the beginning of the summer. As I was reading my entries, I was particularly aware of my own writing. I was trying to determine in my head if my writing is *good* and very worried that it isn't. I wasn't so concerned with my ideas; I'm convinced the things I have to say are interesting, or at least interesting enough. Instead, I was analyzing my sentence fluency and structures and my vocabulary and feeling incredibly insecure that is wasn't *good enough*. Whatever that means.
Why? Well, it all stems back to a BIG fight Kyle and I had a little while ago. It has been a LONG time since Kyle and I had a really big blow out; we just don't do it anymore. And, as often happens when Kyle and I have a big fight, Kyle veered off the topic at hand and began focusing on insulting me purely for the purpose of hurting me. That's how Kyle fights.
Please understand, I'm now outing Kyle here or venting or even saying anything bad about him. We all fight dirty in one way or another. It's the nature of fighting. Insults just happens to be Kyle's technique which is no better or worse than anyone else's technique. And to be fair, when I saw he was really going to get down and dirty, I fought fire with fire and definitely said some things for the sole purpose of hurting him in his most sensitve areas so, you know, all's fair in love and war.
During this particular fight, Kyle was digging deep into his repertoire of insults, really focusing on my various achilles heels, and one of the insults he made is that I think I am a good writer but that actually I am a shitty writer. He even specifically referenced my blog as evidence to my shitty writing. Now, this wasn't totally out of the blue because the fight did start because I inadvertently insulted Kyle while trying to use a conversation about the book Kyle was reading to Graham as a teachable moment. I was asking Graham to use some comprehension strategy and Kyle answered the question instead of Graham. I asked Kyle to back up his answer with evidence, again in trying to model for Graham that good readers have evidence to back up there claims, and Kyle's answer was exactly the kind of answer I would tell one of my students is a cop-out. I blurted this out because it popped into my head and I was still in teacher mode, but of course it pissed Kyle off because I was basically insulting him for his answer. So, eventually this led to him saying I am a shitty reader and citing the many questions I ask about a book I'm reading that he has already read. See? Achilles heel. I mean, my god, I'm a reading teacher.
So, you can see how this naturally led to my poor writing skills which would, of course, accompany my poor reading skills.
The next day, after we had made up, Kyle apologized and admitted that he didn't really mean all the things he said and was only trying to hurt me. Particularly, he knows I am not a bad reader and that I think about reading in a different way since I teach reading comprehension to teenagers. But he definitely didn't reference the writing specifically when *taking back* what he said. And I know that the things I said to hurt him, though exaggerated, had some truth in them. So, I haven't been able to totally let go of this idea that I'm a bad writer. In the end I know it really doesn't matter. Opinions of writing are subjective and it's not like I'm trying to get published or anything or that I need to impress Kyle. When I need to write for a real purpose I get the job done and I do it well enough. But I just thought my recent paranoia in relation to the quality of my writing would be something interesting to write about, ironically. And it did get me to do some writing, even though I'm not in a state of manic-depressive life overhaul right now.
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