Thursday 18 January 2018

In through the out door

Not that long ago I was on my way to see a client at night at their farm in a rural area east of where I live. When I was writing down the address I transposed two numbers on the location for the township road that this person was on. Instead of driving to number 264131 on the township road I drove to 246131 instead, about twenty miles from where I should have been. Of course it had to be about -30C at the time.

Once I got that straightened out I got to the right place about fifty minutes late. I felt very dumb about doing that especially since when I have the right address I am pretty good at finding a place and I rarely get lost. I really dislike being late and I strive to be on time. Being late for an appointment really bothers me.

I admit to having some infrequent dyslexic moments and sometimes I really have to watch myself. There are times I can look at a set of numbers and I will write them down with two of the numbers reversed and no matter how many times I look at what I incorrectly wrote it looks absolutely right to me. I once had an instructor in a university class tell me I wrote "backwards" as some of my thoughts on paper seemed to be in reverse order compared to how someone would usually write the same thing. I learned to write and rewrite papers then get someone to proofread them. One of the reasons I sometimes do not write a lot on this blog is that I can write something and read through it several times and it will not look "right" to me.

When I was a kid I never told anyone about it simply because I never thought it was an issue. It only caused me occasional minor problems so I never thought about it much. To get better in school and to compensate I just tried to do things to help me get better. My father was one of those "no excuses" types so there was not a lot that I ever brought up to him. I am not blaming him, times were different then. So I tried to improve om my own. I literally read hundreds of books on anything and everything in my younger days. As long as it held my interest I would read it. Biographies and well researched history books are still favourites of mine. A few books I read several times because the first few times they did not make sense to me, the order of what I was reading seemed off. Upon repeated readings they would make sense. I mainly read to see how others wrote and pick up some cues from them and my spelling improved immensely. Reading also expanded my vocabulary and hopefully made me smarter. I was good, sometimes great, academically in school. I was not a very confident student.

Writing is something that I am still not all that comfortable doing even though I like to write some stuff for fun. A former aquaintance who knew about my blog told me a few times that when I did write something here it was badly spelled and poorly written. That slightly wounded me. I actually went back and reviewed a number of posts to see if the person was right. Upon review I could not find anything noteworthy to fix. 

Anyway I might try a bit more writing on this blog. We shall see. The problem with writing is finding something to write about.

15 comments:

  1. Please do write more! Your writing and spelling are just fine. Better than 95% of the internet!

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  2. I read many blogs and have seen unkind comments about posts where it was clear that the author had changed direction and not completed the changes completely. I can't understand why someone would take the time to criticise.

    If I wasn't interested in what you post I wouldn't come back, instead I have you book marked. I don't care about any errors and look forward to seeing what you write.

    Helen

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    1. Thanks. I am not looking for validation. I have had a couple of people contact me and ask why I did not write more to go with photo posts. This was meant to kind of be an explanation.

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  3. I like your writing. I'd like to see more. I don't mind the occasional typo. What drives me crazy is when it's obvious the author doesn't know HOW to spell. The accidental error is fine.

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  4. We had spelling class when I was in school and it was quite enjoyable as I remember it. The lessons taught us not only how to spell but also what the words meant and how to use them. At the end of each lesson we were given about twelve to fifteen seemingly unrelated words to use in the composition of a short paragraph which would then be read aloud in class the following week. It was fun and also a challenge as I had/have a problem sounding out words. Spelling class helped guide me to a lifelong love of reading and writing.

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  5. I think you write well, I not only understand what you're saying but it's entertaining!

    I have to double check numbers when I write them down, it's not unusual to get two of them swapped.
    Spelling? I don't have the gene for that, it used to piss my mother off because she could spell. I'm the #1 fan of spell check!

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    1. Spelling is one of those things that irritate me. I like words spelled correctly. I like spell check, I do not like predictive text. I find some words that I typed get changed to other words at times.

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  6. Seems like you're doing okay to me. I have a little more trouble with that sort of thing than I used to. I'm blaming it on old age. - lol - I'm glad you used the term acquaintance and not friend, because he isn't. Incidentally, I had to make two spelling corrections on this short comment! - LOL

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  7. I am a fan of your style of writing and presentation and would love to have more of it to read.

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  8. I come up with most of the things I write about while I'm driving to and from work. I'll "write" a lot of it in my head then go home in the evening and put it "to paper" so to speak. And I'll write about anything that fancies me. What makes good writing great is similar to what makes good singing great. The best writing is an honest expression of what the author is struggling with at the moment. It's real and is not tailored to be sold. It is written to let an idea loose.

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    1. I am going to flag this so I remember it.

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  9. A backwards poet writes inverse.

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  10. I had trouble with numbers in college. I failed a physics test once, and after looking at my test and score, realized that most of my wrong answers had the correct numbers in the wrong order. Sheesh!

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    1. I took an advance math quiz once in high school. I got a good mark. I would have got all of them right (it was only six questions) except I worked out the right answer in my calculations but I entered the wrong number on the answer sheet.

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