<-- start self-loathing
Every weekday morning, pretty much, I have coffee with my mother. This morning, as a sweet kind of reminiscence, she brought along a batch of old school reports of mine that she'd found. They covered from the beginning of school - when I was six - through till I was close to finishing school when I was maybe seventeen. It proved to be incredibly depressing. It's not so nice to see every bad trait that you thought you had repeated year after year after year in report comments. Seems like I was always lazy, disorganised, shallow and so on and so forth. At 43, sometimes you realise you get the life you (didn't) work for.
end self-loathing -->
i once joked to my boss that every single “performance review” in my entire life — starting with nursery school — says the same thing. it’s good to be consistent, i guess.
i guess. mine all say the same thing over and over, and this morning (at least), it kind of got to me.
can you turn any of these to your advantage? i mean, my teachers’ saying reads all the time and does not interact with her classmates doesn’t strike me as a bad thing …
Jonathan,
I don’t have much to say about your report cards ;-) (I always got F’s in handwriting –in elementary school, when we were graded on it) but I think you’re a lovely person for having coffee with your mom every day. Good on you!! You are a wonderful person –for that alone, not to mention other things :-)
sdn: i think what struck me was the consistency of a bunch of comments, which weren’t necessarily wrong. i’m not sure how you turn lazy and doesn’t apply himself to your advantage…
ellen: thanks.
Jonathan, I would have thought that instead of self-loathing, you could have scrolled down to your entry of 31 January and said, “Well that’ll show those know-nothin’ teachers!”
Your school reports just mean you were bored with school — which is normal. If they’d offered anything interesting I’m sure you would have applied yourself and been anything but lazy, as is the case with your literary work.
I also bet many of your teachers would envy your family life, be greatly impressed by your body of work, and be really jealous that you are a friend and colleague of so many famous writers around the world.
So quit this self-loathing crap and get back to your desk, Mr Strahan. Show some application, for heaven’s sake! Anything under a dozen anthologies in 2007 will be considered lazy!
P.S. There’s still got to be something better and more original than “Universe”
Gee, are my own self-deprecating winter mopes making their way to summery Oz? (Well yeah, I did send you that email….)
You’re a fine, dedicated multi-tasker and I hope the gloom will vanish ASAP!
I can’t square the amount you accomplish in a single year with the descriptors “lazy” and “doesn’t apply himself.” If you can edit six anthologies on top of a day job and being a dad and husband by being “lazy”, you’d be truly frightening in “energetic” mode. I’m forced to assume that (tip of the hat to T. E. Lawrence) it was just your manner.
I don’t see how one can be lazy or disorganized and still manage to put together multiple books in a single year — or a single lifetime. So you’ve at least overcome those childhood issues, right?
listen, when it comes to school most of us are lazy and disorganized. i could not have cared less about, say, the fertile crescent or making a diorama out of gum or whatever.
underachievers unite!