Note: To the Ukrainian bot that hit this blog 18 times from three different operating systems and without hitting a single post, I have one thing to say: I have no information about Joe Biden.
That said, I continue to write and to try to get published. Writing has become part of who I am, even if I started at it late. Let me correct that -- I never took myself seriously before. If someone liked what I wrote, I said, "Oh, that little thing? It's nothing."
This sort of self-deprecation disguised as modesty is part of the baggage women are taught from an early age. We're told -- at least women in my generation were told -- that we shouldn't upstage the men in our life, so if we excelled at something, we should play it down. We should deny it. Women were taught not to brag; "to brag" meaning "to assert any talent, quality, or achievement; to tell the truth about their accomplishments".
Inwardly, however, women were taught to castigate themselves for not being perfect. The grades are never high enough, the job performance never good enough, the house never clean enough.
What a dilemma -- women must be inwardly perfect while preserving the illusion of mediocrity. So women hide the 98% they got on the exam while beating themselves up about the other 2%. In this schema, women not only can't win but shouldn't win.
I don't know if women are still brought up this way, but when I discuss this with my students, the women nod knowingly. I've had several female students say, "I don't want to brag".
I wonder if this gets in the way of my getting published. I send things out to journals and publishers with the thought "I don't know if this is good enough," and when I get rejected, I think "It probably wasn't good enough." I wonder if this attitude of mine is reflected in my cover letters and pitches. I wonder if my attitude causes good things to be reflected from me in some sort of reverse "The Secret" (a new-agey book about how we can attract good to us; a lot of bunk).
But that is part of the syndrome. Not only do I hold myself responsible for rejections, but I hold myself responsible for not attracting success to myself.
I really think I should cure myself of the syndrome.
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