What I've gotten good at

[branchandroot]

synecdochic has an excellent post about why "modesty" is a bad thing. (ETA: As per Phoebe's comment, it is well to clarify: a bad thing to attempt to require of other people.)

My own take is a lot shorter: Naraht et al are wrong. Put a period on it.

And annotated_em has a lovely meme/contribution/exercise, which is to say something about one's awesomeness. Something you worked at. Something you're proud of, or possibly something you should be proud of if you weren't shamed into denying it.

(I remember when we did this a few years ago, and it was really hard to do then, also.)

So: I'm a very fine writer. I write stories with well-considered character development, and I research the heck out of them. I write tight, elegant articles with sharp, well-chosen quotes to demonstrate my analysis. I have written one way or another since I was in middle school, and I've worked at it and read a ton and experimented with writing like Them, and I'm still going.

I also (wow, it's like hauling bricks to do more than one of these...) write lovely website layouts. I worked through years of trial and error and reading up on standards and hunting down CSS methods, and it paid off: I write lovely layouts with clean code.

I taught myself php by making myself a website, and wanting to do things with it. I learned by immersion, and frustration, and having screaming tantrums at WordPress, and now I can read and edit most code, and even make some programs from scratch.

I have taken care of myself and gotten better. Emotionally, physically, mentally, I have done what I needed to survive, and after that I have done what I needed to start getting better and keep getting better and make my life worth living.

I am fucking awesome, and no one can take that away.

Comments

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Morally wrong?? Yeesh. I missed that, and I'm glad I missed it.

(I think. Perhaps I'll peek -- no, wait, I might be too afraid.)

Ick, ick, ick. It's cultural code, for God's sake. It has no absolute moral value. It doesn't even have much relative moral value. It's like the hand you use for your dinner knife! I --

No, I'll stop ranting now. Except to say, And here I thought for once I agreed with her about something. Silly of me, wasn't it?

[branchandroot]

*wry* That, exactly. I mean, if she wants to say "this isn't how my $community does things, so I'll be over here doing things this other way", fine! It's when she started claiming that no one should be doing it because it proves you're insecure, and also accomplishment is the product of privilege so being vocally proud of one's accomplishments is an expression of unexamined privilege. That's when my hackles went up and I started hissing.