I don’t consider myself that good of a writer. I always feel like I can never fully express what it is I want to say, that whatever I write is inadequate. I figure I’ve got the technical part of it pretty squared away. (Is saying “I figure” less southern than saying “I reckon”? Cause some people have made fun of me for saying “I reckon.”) I can generally piece together coherent sentences and even some well structured ones. It’s the art of choosing words and knowing how to use them effectively, placing words so that the flow instead of standing stiffly that seems so elusive.

So while I may not be good at it I love writing. There are a lot of times I use it as a type of therapy. Even when I know that not many, if any, people will ever read it I feel better putting thoughts down. And I want to get better with my writing. I’m not going to sit here and say “I’m not a writer” because that would be stupid. I write, therefore I am a writer. I may not have aspirations of writing for publications or creating novels or making a living from writing but that doesn’t mean I’m not a writer. (This sort of goes along with my “not a photographer” gripe.)

I’ve struggled to find topics to write about for this site. A lot of my life right now focuses on my job, which I am not willing to write about. I don’t view that as a form of censorship; I see it as being smart. I’ve never tried to keep this site anonymous and I take full responsibility know that family, friends, and employers (current and theoretical future ones) could find and read to their heart’s content. I have no desire to start password protecting posts, either. That’s why when I do mention anything remotely job related I make sure that, given the chance, I don’t say anything that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Besides, it would mostly be boring things about SQL and report writing and– here’s where I stop myself.

What I’m trying to say is that I feel like I lack purpose. Why do I write here? I don’t have a cause. I’m not an advocate for anything. I don’t lead an amazingly interesting life. And I’m not a mommyblogger (not that there is anything wrong with mommybloggers). I’m not out to monetize the site through sponsorships or advertising. And I’m not about to start regularly blogging about my cats because I’m not a crazy cat lady. Yet.

In spite of all of that I feel like I could be doing something with this site and writing in general. I’ve been doing ok with having Wordless on Wednesday posts fairly regularly and while I highly enjoy sharing my photos (I think I’ll be writing another post on that), I want to write. Having a blog seems like having a mass of potential that is just waiting to be used. So I must ask myself why I haven’t used that potential yet.

Maybe I just haven’t found “my thing” yet. Or my niche if we want to get fancy. I’m about to equate this with my “real life.” Actually, now that I say that, I don’t want to have to make a distinction between the two. I am who I am; I don’t need to create a different persona. This is part of my real life. Also, it pains me to see writers who say they are afraid to write certain things because they’re worried about what their established readers will think. (Watch, I’m about to really contradict that statement.) I think that happens because maybe sometimes they intentionally or unintentionally create this online person that is only part of them or is entirely fake. I don’t want to create a persona that isn’t wholly me. (Wow, that’s a whole other issue to tackle.)

Rabbit trail over! What I mean to say is that fairly often I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines. Part of that is intentional. I really value my alone time and I don’t always need to be in the thick of things. I’m no stranger to being called an introvert and let’s just say I didn’t socialize much when I was younger. Or ever. And while I’ve been raised to believe in “hogwash labels” I think I have some form of social anxiety. I have irrational thoughts about how I just know that people are going to judge me for saying or doing ANYTHING and I just freeze up and do nothing. As I said, they’re irrational. I know this. It doesn’t keep me from thinking them. The fear of being judged is really strong for me. Awesome thing that is the internet: I tried to see if “the fear of being judged” has an amazingly cool name like triskaidekaphobia. (I ALMOST SPELLED THAT RIGHT WITH NO HELP. Stupid “k.”) (By the way, that is fear of the number 13.) From what I can tell it doesn’t. It’s the definition of social anxiety or social phobia.

So. Social anxiety. It’s not extreme to the point of my not being able to be in any sort of social situation. I can and do function. I do, however, feel like I don’t and never will fit in anywhere. Not even in online communities and the quasi-anonymity they offer. I will never meet most of you who read this. I could hide behind my screen and write whatever I want and probably never have to deal with the consequences. I don’t want to be like that (but I could).

There are so many times that I see people talking to each other, having conversations, and making good friends and I want to jump in and say something because I don’t want to be a total hermit. But then fear of people not liking me holds me back. I want to be a part of their group but what if they hate me? What if they think I’m being rude or totally random and crash their party? Why should my opinion be worth anything? What if they call me weird or crazy? I joke and try to tell myself that everyone I know has called me crazy at least once. I think that’s a coping mechanism. While it may be true that many people I know have called me crazy it’s a very painful truth. I am not literally crazy. Why do they feel the need to label my behavior as such when I’m no more crazy than they are? Maybe that’s a separate issue.

There’s a vulnerability to opening yourself up to others. (There is a lot of vulnerability in sharing art but I’m saving that for another post.) Maybe my social anxiety has developed from the number of times I have been burned and now I’m afraid to open up to anyone. Because that fear of being judged? It’s not completely irrational. I’ve experienced it before, and from the people I had thought most would be the ones to at least accept, if not understand, what I had shared. I’ve never ever had buckets or even slightly moderate amounts of self confidence. So why am I writing at all?

I want to get better. The little reading I did about social anxiety said that cognitive behavioral therapy is the way to correct it. I think cure is too strong of a word. I’m not about to sign up for therapy. Not yet anyway; I’m not going to completely rule that out but I don’t think it’s likely. Besides, I can’t imagine what some people would say about needing therapy for this. Or anything because all psychologists and psychiatrists are quacks, right? (I’m joking; others wouldn’t be.) From what I can tell, all of this is in my head. There isn’t anything wrong with me in a neurological or chemical any other sort of sense. It’s thought processes, processes that can be retrained. The first step to recovery is usually admitting that there is a problem in the first place.

And so, using my own form of therapy, I’m writing about it. Writing a massive post that is starting to resemble a wall of text. I should give a cookie to everyone who reads it all. Virtual cookies. This is definitely a work in progress and I plan to revisit the topic of social anxiety as I try to figure out how I can overcome it.

And I wish that I had some pretty pictures to break up this massive wall of text but I don’t. I’m making do with a laptop that has lasted over 7 years now. That qualifies it for the label of dinosaur, right? And the edit area for my WordPress dash on this laptop screen is SO DAMN TINY.

Oh, I said damn… what will people think?

So. How does one get better at something they aren’t good at? Usually the answer is practice. In this case I think it will be a great help. In some ways I have been practicing. This whole site, for example, has required me to write about several different things such as myself, the site, and whatever strikes my fancy when I decide to make a post. Like now. I’m writing about how poor of a writer I am.

Sometimes a person needs a little help. I don’t want to start writing the kind of entries that start out like “So today I went to work. [This] and [that] happened and then I went to lunch. Once I got back to work I had to [do this]…” It’s just not that interesting. Still, I do enjoy writing and posting here. I just need something to talk about.

That’s where you come in: suggest a topic for me to write about. I can’t promise that I will write about each and every one as I believe that some topics should never see the light of the “Publish” button. In fact, I have a post that I need to work on about that very subject. (I just haven’t been able to clearly express my thoughts on it.) Come on, folks, give me a challenge!

1. Even when I don’t know how to spell a word or when I don’t know exactly what a word means there’s always Firefox’s spellchecker plus the all-mighty Webster’s dictionary. People should take advantage of Webster more often than they do.

Then there’s the misspellings. I make my fair share of spelling mistakes but since I use Firefox I’m able to cut them out because of the built in spell checker. I’ve not delved in to IE7 or any other browser to really know if they have that as built in or add on capability. (Yes, I’m a Firefox user and really don’t care for IE much at all though I am aware a good portion of the population still uses it. This could be cause for another rant entirely on how often I hear people say “I get to the internet by clicking on the blue ‘E’” when I’ve asked them what browser they’re using.)

One thing that a spell checker can’t help is the choice of the wrong word. While there are many examples to choose from there are two that I’ve seen recently: bear and wary. Often whenever someone is wishing to ask someone to “bear with them” it will read “Bare with me for a moment.” Then you have wary. Just the other day I saw that someone had mentioned they were ‘weary’ of doing a certain task. Further reading indicated that they had never performed this task and were actually ‘wary’ of it.

As a final item: grammar in general. I was reading a news article online the other day and realized that one sentence made entirely no sense. It seemed as if someone had been copying and pasting some sentences in and somehow smashed two into one though that’s just a guess; there was no period at the end of the thought. In another article on the same site there were no spaces after the periods in one portion of the article. On yet another website I was bombarded by a multitude of misplaced commas. It was as if the author really had a thing going for commas and just threw them in after every few word.

I don’t claim to have perfect grammar all the time. It’s been years since I’ve had any type of grammar course to remind me about things like ending sentences in prepositions. (Though I do remember that one; do I always follow it? Probably not.) All of this reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from The Lord of the Rings movie:

“Anyways, you need people of intelligence on this type of mission…quest…thing.” – Pippin in The Fellowship of the Ring

All in all if you want to be taken seriously you should pay attention to your grammar and spelling. It speaks a lot about a person, even in this age of internet and texting slang. That’s my 2¢ on the matter.