Why am I here?

I thought that it might be prudent to introduce myself in my first item, while at the same time examining my intentions in joining this site in the first place. So, let's get right to it: My name is Mike, and I'm a 27-year-old Canadian who should have several solid years of post-high school writing experience under my belt, had I not fallen victim to pessimism, discouragement, and the ever-present fear of failure. After all, one can't fail if one doesn't try. Yet over the years, it began to dawn on me that to allow my fear to prevent me from trying to write is to become a failure by default. Why must I always sell myself short, in all aspects of life?

But I am getting ahead of myself. To start closer to the beginning, I should explain that it took years to convince myself that I might one day actually be able to consider myself a writer. If writing is a calling, then I simply failed to hear it the first several times it called out to me. Only when it was screaming into my ear did I take notice, and start to think about it seriously.

High school was the perfect place to find inspiration and motivation. Being forced to write is a wonderful thing. I took as many English classes as I could, and I relished each assignment as an opportunity to hone my skills and prove myself as a developing writer. The praise and critical feedback on these assignments was invaluable. As I entered my senior years, many of my teachers and peers figured that it was a given for me to pursue a career in writing. I mean, what else was I going to do?

Now here I sit, a Virtual Person amongst some one hundred and ninety-thousand other Virtual Writers, seeking praise and criticism from my Virtual Community. In this age of the Insta-Celebrity, everyone is one blog away from fifteen minutes of Virtual Fame. Many people see the Internet as an enormous marketing tool, a method of connecting with thousands of readers who would otherwise be unreachable to the unpublished author. For my part, it only magnifies my sense of hopeless anonimity, a little fish in a big sea with hopes of one day swimming alongside the Great White Sharks of the business.

I have clung to my high school papers like a washed-up athlete who polishes his high school trophies every night, reliving past glories while trying to somehow make them relevant to the present day. And then I realize that those past glories were perhaps only possible because of microcosmic nature of high school. Even if I was the best writer or my class, or my whole school (I'm sure I wasn't, but let's pretend that I was), what does that really say about my ability, once you take into account that only a small percentage of students gave a second thought to their writing abilities? If anything, it says that I was among a handful of students who were among the best of a slightly larger handlful of students that fashioned themselves as writers of some sort. Whoopee.

Enter WDC, where that handful of would-be writers just got immensely larger, and my chances of being noticed have thus been reduced accordingly. Whatever the case, it doesn't matter. As a sort of last-ditch effort to motivate myself and to slow the death of my soul, I decided to seek a community of sorts, where I can at least pretend that other people are reading my work. Maybe I can find some answers here as well. Perhaps even help some others who are struggling with this harder than I am. I feel that I do have a knack for it, after all. Some people seemed to have learned to play an instrument while in the womb. Others can solve complex mathematical problems in their heads. Some can lift heavy weights or run very fast. I can look at a sentence or paragraph and tell the author why it is incorrect, most of the time. But I'm sorely out of practice, my reading habits in the same state of neglect as my writing, until recently.

That is ultimately why I am here. For practice. If you're cursing me for wasting your time with this rambling editorial or whatever it is, I apologize, and I thank you for reading. I hope it only gets better from here.