Hooray for spell check

Hooray for spell check
My writing moto is 3 cheers for spell check. I will be 50 this year so as you can imagine grow up in the 80s and early 90. my dyslexia was missed . I could do enough to be in the middle range sometimes falling below it then getting extra help when needed . I spent my school life finding ways to keep up with my class mate masking my difficulties and finding other ways to cope .

I loved learning . I am a doer . I watch and learn . Explained in multiple ways till it makes sense . Till the puzzle pieces slot in to place . Seemingly I have a short memory shelf . If the info is not locked in to place its like a squirrel has just knocked all the information off in to the abbeys . It disappears as if I had never heard or seen it . I am left with a glaikit stare( glaikit means foolish / senseless )

When writing I always picked the words I could spell. The safer less complicated less vibrant descriptors. Not challenging myself or being challenged. Though I loved reading the cliff notes of the books my friends in the top English set .
I love reading. I love words and what they evoke. I took they test 5 years ago and sure enough it was confirmed. Dyslexia
It was a relief to not view myself as thick Lazy day dreamer.
If only I could apply myself more. Work harder. Keep the spelling rules of their, there and they’re. Here and hear. Parroting I before e except after c . Like it was a mantra but having the inability to imagine where that applied.
Truth be told some days I struggle for every word that goes on paper. Confidence and self-doubt a barometer of productivity. swinging from both haphazardly. Navigating opinion, others voices stacked high like a barricade to climb

The practicalities of putting pen to paper before word processors and computers. Yes, I am that old dear reader. Before the internet. Imagine Everything written in long hand. Dictionary in the other. But if you mangle words to the point of a bloody long drawn out execution. Finding the more grandiose eloquent way of painting, waxing lyrical, describing enlivening the page seemed beyond my ken ( ken Scottish dialect means to know or imagination )

Jumbling up first person and then switching to third person view point. Jumbled clunky awkward prose. Lines of subject matter blurring in my brain. words moving on the page. Confounded by what I read sounding out letters that seem abstract till an other hands me the cypher .
My brain goes yup yup of course you silly woman. Simple ! Easy! Why didn’t you see it! .
( okay lets be honest stronger language is used and more self-deprecating than that )

Its like a fog that gathers the tendrils and wisps invade neural pathways and invade the hippocampus the synapsis and connections not firing on all cylinders.
When fatigue is prevalent nothing makes sense. nothing can be accessed the same nothing retained.
The memory full of holes and taking on water. drowning in consonants and vowels. Lost in a maze of infinitives, Suffix and superlative and superfluous speech. commas and dashes and dotes ( my SOS ) semicolons pebble dashed in a staccato fashion , because I know they need to go some where . O what the hell throw it there , their and they’re and hope for the best . I know I know it will piss of the grammar perfectionists but indulge my little joke

When focus is that hard and concentration that laboured its like ants are crawling over my skin . I cant sit still. Nothing and I mean nothing goes in . Its like a disconnect the eyes look but do not see. the brain rebels and tears form as I beat the drum to retreat. Feeling battered and bruised and all to often exposed especially if others need my written word and report. AS others eyes see what my brain tells me. Your thick don’t reach above your lot . Use the simpler terms keep it brief.
Then no one can pick and find fault. You didn’t really try so there for you did not fail. Because I held back and didn’t give my all. So my core self is kept small not visible on the page.
The imperfect perfectionist. who reluctantly shared creativity for it to be critiqued like it was a project for the reader. To give opinion then seek favour in others eyes for their critique to be critiqued by whom they saw as peers. So that their words could be scored on their scoring of mine. so faint praise could be a tasty morsel for their self-esteem. While mines were bland gourds in my mouth.
Leaves of paper torn from note pads discarded shredded before ending up in the bin with last night’s dinner.
Reluctance to delve and explore my core. to create and imagine and paint with words. Because let’s face it who wants to be pedestrian.
Academic achievements over the years shied away from as overwhelming factors told me I couldn’t. Anxiety crippling.
I kept the words and images in the minds eye seeing the characters so sharp so clear I can look them in the eye and tell you how the light plays of the flecks in the iris . the palpable discourse that makes up the human condition.
But at times am just plain FUCKED when it comes to putting it all down on paper. That why I think of myself as a narrator and day dreamer

I have been lucky over the past few years to have others encourage me. sharing the etymology of words and their love of books and the worlds they take you too. My imagination just as integral and integrated to my story. My story telling. Being a narrator in passionate form
With help have placed words on paper sporadically and with held breath place myself on view .
What you did not see was the first and second drafts the furrowed brow. the deletions and corrections just to feel it was enough
Cause lets face it 3 cheers for spell check . How many would have read past the first paragraph littered with mistakes . I think not

So ...........

Again three cheers for spell check Hip hooray Hip hooray Hip hooray my invisible friend