Writing. What a Pain in the Butt.

Can’t believe it has been over a year since I have updated this blog. Admittedly, I have not been very motivated this past year. I told my boyfriend many times that I should shut down this blog because I wasn’t really invested in it anyways. However, I never managed to pull the plug.

I originally started this blog in order to better express myself by writing about things I am interested in. However, shortly after starting this blog, I remembered how much I loathed writing. I think the reason why I hated writing so much stems from my childhood.

As a child of two cultures, grammar was a very hard concept for me to grasp. Before going to elementary school, my parents spoke to my brothers and I in only Cantonese. We didn’t learn how to speak English until we started going to school. As soon as I started school, I remember I was put into English as a Second Language (ESL) class for most of my elementary school life. I was there until grade 5. Up until that time, I didn’t realize I struggled with grammar until my high school teacher pointed out that I always write things “backwards”.

What does that mean you may ask? I always use the analogy of how in English you would say, “how are you?” vs in Cantonese, you would say “你好吗?”. You will notice where ‘you’ in Chinese is the first character and for English, it is the last word. That was essentially my life. I don’t think I had that problem speaking, unless no one corrected me…

I was really confused growing up to the point where I almost risked failing university English. I managed to navigate through my university degree by writing papers in a very simple and straight forward format by adding a period to make short sentences and avoiding overly descriptors. I also struggled a lot with tenses, you may notice it the more I write. Great with spelling though even though everyone uses spellcheck nowadays but I am getting off topic here. The bottomline is, I never really enjoyed writing because I am always second guessing myself. Even writing right now, I am second guessing every word I am typing up.

Due to this constant second guessing of myself, I feel like I have dulled my ability to express myself through the written word. Even at work, I write very direct emails and I dreaded writing any kind of business papers.

I should resurrect my goal of why I started this blog in the first place. Not necessarily to become a better writer per-say, although I am hoping that becomes a byproduct of this blog, but be better at how to express myself through the written word. I am going to set a SMART goal for myself, I will write one entry once a month and hope I surpass that goal at the end of this year. Until next time!