I’m not actually very good at this.
Nine A*’s and one A at G.C.S.E.
That A proved it, I was rubbish at creative writing. 📖
You can probably tell, I was a very conscientious student. I loved school, I loved learning, I loved homework and I loved achieving. 🏅 I enjoyed the simplicity of working hard, then taking a test and getting a result that validated all that effort. ✅
Anything less than top marks meant that it just wasn’t my thing. 🤓
And so I veered towards Maths, Physics, Chemistry and ditched anything creative. Music, art, drama, writing - they just weren’t for me.
And of course it’s hard to get better at something that you don’t practice so eventually I fulfilled my own belief and I became pretty lousy at writing. 📝
YET HERE I AM
That want for validation of effort I mentioned is not something that has carried over into adult life particularly smoothly, and especially not into motherhood. 😬
At first this really threw me, I grappled for it, trying harder at work, filling all my time with new hobbies, doing online courses and getting unnecessary qualifications.
But I just wasn’t seeing the results. 😕
I got pretty fed up with all the effort that just wasn’t paying off. It left me frustrated and tired.
AND SO I DECIDED TO EXPLORE OTHER WAYS.
A real turning point came when I read Big Magic 💫 by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s amazing. She writes about how creativity is expressed in so many different ways. Writing the code for a website - creative. Designing a science experiment- creative. Thinking up innovative ways to present your accounts - creative.
That pretty much turned on it’s head my theory that I wasn’t very creative. 🤨
AND SO HERE I AM EXPERIMENTING WITH SOMETHING THAT I HAVE LONG BELIEVED I AM NOT VERY GOOD AT. 📒
Maybe I’m still not but I’ve got years of lost practice to make up for and a whole new mindset that makes it a fun and enjoyable. And I am writing about things that I feel very passionate about which makes all the difference. 🥰
Have you ever thought to challenge your beliefs about what you’re not very good at? What just isn’t your thing? How you could do it differently or from another perspective?