Writing

For the longest time, I never though I had the ability to right well. No matter what I did, or what I wrote, I always thought it was crap. Why? Because I have always hated writing.

The only thing that kept me from getting straight A's in school was English. I will admit that I did flunk a course in elementary school...spelling. And when I was in 6th grade, I had to have a parent teacher conference because my handwriting was so bad, the teachers needed me to type everything. They couldn't read a thing I wrote. I was on my way to being a horrible student in high school, and it all started with English. Luckily for me, my teacher gave me a few breaks and I ended up on the right track. I hated writing book reports, essays, papers, what ever. Oddly enough, after my freshman year, my hatred of writing didn't keep me from taking the hardest English classes available, it just kept me from doing well in them.

But lately I have begun to realize, maybe I did learn how to write somewhere in that process (of course writing includes proofreading, so don't take my blogs as examples. They aren't proofread to any degree what so ever). Now I don't mean I can do all genres of writing. Shannon's got me beat at anything interesting, poetic, or meaningful. But when I have to state an opinion, of which I have many, as long as I spend enough time thinking and researching the topic, I can write a good paper. This I learned today.

See, at work we had to write up why our program should have a bigger budget than before (considering we have been flat funded for the past 15 years and we all know the price of medical care has gone up during that time period, it should be a no brainer. But no, it isn't). My boss sends me the rough draft on Wednesday and I go through it and cringe. Poorly organized, too much detail, and not enough explanation of why this program is important. So I completely re-write the entire thing. After going through 4-5 rounds of review, what was turned in to the head of the center today was probably 90% my work, and all my organization. It was clear, concise, and strong. No "I believe's" or "we think." Nope, a good, short, strong position piece. I was really happy with it, and so was the head of the entire branch.

Will we get the increase? Of course not. I'm in public health, who cares about public health? They are spending all sorts of money on separating the dept. of health services into the dept. of public health and dept. of health care services, but they aren't giving us any money to run our programs. Did I mention the 800,000 being spent on the director's office, which is why they cut the osteoporosis program? Looking good is all that's important, not doing good.

But that's besides the point. The point is, maybe I can write after all. Now, what do I write about next?