When I first started working as a reporter, I was clueless and terrified; I adopted a fake-it-till-you-make-it strategy. But as time went on I learned a thing or two about newspapers, about Laramie and myself. I learned that journalists work hard and hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to finding and publishing the truth, I learned that local politics matter, that writing is a powerful tool and that one person can make a difference. But one lesson in particular remains the most important to me, and that is don’t let your weaknesses define you.
When I was kid, I was diagnosed with Dyslexia, a learning disability that involves a difficulty in learning to read, interpret words, letters and other symbols. The best way to imagine it is if each time you looked at a word the order of the letters get jumbled together in no consistent or recognizable pattern and that jumble is ever changing.
For as long as I remember I wanted to be a writer. When I got this news, it came to me as what seemed like some cruel joke. I struggled with grammar, spelling and syntax, as all my peers excelled. The school took this diagnosis as a sign that higher education was not for me, and they adjusted my path accordingly. For many years, I accepted this diagnosis and like my teachers and peers believed that my path toward being a construction worker was set in stone. For some time, I dabbled in such useful trades as HVAC and cooking but never finding them intellectually stratifying. I knew I still wanted to be a writer.
But I was too afraid to try, until one day when a good friend of mine convinced me to apply to the school paper. I enter the job expecting it was only a matter of time until they discovered me. Each story I turned in I thought would surely be my last, that someone like me could never be a writer.
But as time went on, and I wasn’t fired, I even received the occasional complement on an article I learned it was something I could do. It was frustrating at times as I struggled with grammar and spelling after countless edits. It drove me crazy at times as I watched other writers fly through stories while I typed away at a snail’s pace. It was discouraging when people mistook my mistakes for laziness despite the extraordinary effort I put into the article. But it didn’t stop me. I found even though an article may take me longer, and that grammar may remain as comprehensible as sand-script, at least I was writing. I was doing what I wanted to do.
Though I may have been the writer whose stories were always late or the writer with awful spelling or even a bad writer, at least I was a writer. My point in all this is don’t let a disability define you. It will always be a part of you, but don’t let it define you. Nothing about you is set in stone you can be what you want to be and who you want to be. Whether you struggle with ADHD, depression, anxiety or whatever hinders you, it will only be as much of your identity as you let it. Yeah, things may be harder for you, it may take you more time to do the same thing, it will be frustrating but it’s the only good fight and it will be all the more impressive when you do succeed despite all the obstacles.
A teacher once told me that you could be bad at arithmetic and still be amazing at math. Often the things that discourage us are such a small part of what we want to do. Don’t let one thing hold you back. Though you may be struggling and working hard, at least you’re struggling and working hard at something you want to do. These things don’t have to hold you back. After all Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the Ninth.
