So, I suck.
Just lemme check and make sure the mood has been sufficiently set. Everyone flummoxed? Groovy. Now to start off about explaining why I suck. For those not in the know, explaining your thesis is generally the first point of order of any persuasive piece, so I’m not really breaking any new conventions. But let’s get this party started, shall we?
1.) I’m completely unoriginal. Clearly, if I wanted to start off strong I’d go in with a hook about how I was awesome, then cleverly dissuade this notion through satire. But even satire’s been around since before Jesus, so, ya know, not even the delivery of my self-deprecating jokes is original.
2.) I’m boring. The best evidence of this is that I have a blog.
3.) I’m a self-deprecating, whiny, little, white girl who should be grateful for what she’s got. Well, everyone should be grateful about what he or she has, but this is beside the point. The point is I suck because I have a job, but I whine about it only being a temp position. I receive money from said job, but I fret about being broke. I was born into a land of opportunity where I could make something of myself by changing my stars and all that, but I’m a neurotic little procrastinator.
4.) I talk way, way, way too loudly. Like, even my whisper can be heard five cubicles over.
5.) Like. I use filler words so much in my every day conversations that they have long since seeped into the very fiber of my writing giving my style a very… shall we say, obnoxious tone. We shall. We shall not, however, talk run-on sentences, comma splices, pronoun antecedent agreements or misuse of parenthetical asides. Those subjects are a tad bit too personal.
6.) I love writing and I don’t do it. This is probably the most unforgivable error. Ever since I could pick up a book I’ve been fascinated by stories. Literally, consumed by the arc created by a well-disciplined writer’s hand. When I was in elementary school and middle school if I wasn’t reading I was writing and I was even noticed by my peers for my passion for putting hideously colored gel pens to paper (oh like you didn’t have one as a tweener girl in the late nineties/early aughts). But something weird happens when the compliment everyone in your class gives you is that you’ll be a writer some day… You get scared witless. I remember reading Stephen King’s On Writing and feeling the pang of truth when he described the neediness of a writer. It’s terrifying to think that your audience (no matter how large or small) might pick a part the piece of your essence you felt confident enough to actually commit to ink. And so it came to be that I let my neurosis dictate my will to follow what made me happy. Telling stories, creating characters, et al. used to be all I wanted to do and I let fear hold me back.
So, in an effort to suck less (because trust me, I will always have a smidgen of suckage to my name), I’m kicking fear in the testicles and pushing my debilitating neurotic hang-ups out the door. I’m going to write. It won’t always be great good decent legible entertaining, but it will be an exercise that I need. So, read it or not. Comment if you have a thought. Regardless of the response, this blog’s for me.
7.) I’m a narcissist. 😉
Katelyn
Penned Down 