Writing Envy

I read someone’s blog this morning, and is was so thoroughly better written than mine that I felt lazy for doing what I do here. It is true that this is not meant to be a critically acclaimed bit of writing every day… not really even once a week. The feeling was one of appreciation for this person’s style and insight and overall way with the language. I have some shame of sorts around my lifelong lack of reading… there is also some pride, strangely. In the third grade, I was tested for reading comprehension, and did not do so well. It’s possible that today, I would have been tagged as ADD/ADHD or dyslexic… I had more than one issue in this realm. I could not put it all together… the letters, paragraphs, and pages (so many pages). Reading an entire book was frightening, and so I rarely did.

This continued well into adulthood, and is still plenty a part of my life. Countless classics in literature won’t likely ever be read by me. At best, I’ll make some time some day to listen to them, but that’s just not the same as reading those books. All of this is to say that I find my writing to lack the magic that I would have acquired by reading the many greats. I have tried to counter that with lots of writing, but the style of journaling is narrow in scope. I’d like to challenge myself to complete a short story or some other longer form piece, but that would need to be prioritized. I’m not committing to that today… I’ll just keep doing this, and I’ll keep writing haikus, and I’ll keep filling journals. I am enough.