What I've gotten good at

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.