Things I am good at

There are a number of things I am pretty good at. There are even a few things I am very good at. And, without hyperbole, there is little I don't do well if I put effort into trying. However, the consistent phenomenon in all the activities I try is that I am not very good when I start. Put another way, I have a lot of most improved trophies.

The only real exceptions to my poor to mediocre initial attempts were reading and writing. And I have come to understand that this is a double-edged sword. For example, I have done so little work on writing over the years that my first inclination is to explain an important part of my life with a tired and tedious cliche. I also feel the need to explain that a cliche is tired and tedious, when that is clearly redundant given the meaning of the word.

Basically, I cruised through elementary and high school without ever learning about how to write correctly. I was always praised for my writing, and reading was effortless. I even managed to escape high school without ever taking a grammar lesson. I did some work during my B.A. to improve my writing, but mostly that improvement was through practice. And I learned nothing about the process of academic reading until well into my M.A. This lack of critical practice in reading and writing finally caught up to me during my PhD classes. And it continues to be the underlying reason for renewing this blog.

Initially, I was lucky that I could read and write better than my classmates. But that luck, without direction, became laziness and a belief that I did not need to work at these things, only try occasionally at essay or exam time. I remember losing interest in reading in elementary school after I tore through a good chunk of the books in the modest library we had, during a period of my youth I was fascinated by speed reading. When you are in grade 4 but read at close to a university level, there aren't a lot of books in an elementary library that are compelling. I tried to read my parents' collection of Reader's Digest classics but "Ivanhoe" and "Moby Dick" were a little slow for a fourth grade kid. I don't want to sound like I am blaming my school, or my circumstance. I generally had an excellent academic experience. I only mean to remind myself why I tend to stumble and have to restart this project of working on writing, and trying to read more consistently.

Because, as the simultaneously overrated (by fans) and underrated (by literary snobs) Steven King reminds us, a good writer must read lots and write lots. And, those were the only things in life I didn't need to work on growing up and I still resist the necessity of practicing them now.