The reason behind the mistakes

I got a private message, kind of feedback that was meant in a kind hearted way. And  let me make it clear, this person started the message telling me how much they enjoy my music. I greatly appreciate feedback, it helps me get better at doing what I do.

But this was a good reminder for me. Some of you know my story, some of you might only been following my blogs for a while and understandably do not know some of the details of my story. So it might be a good time to bring this up again.

The feedback was about mistakes in my (blog) writing and there are a lot of them, I’ll be the first to admit that. So lets rewind back to my school days. I struggled throughout the school. I was always behind in my school work. Teachers called me lazy enough times that I started to believe it my self. I was a slow reader. I found my self reading a page and having to go back and read it again as I realised I had no idea what I just read. The lines kept jumping, I’d sendup reading the same line again and again. If you gave me spoken directions, I would find it hard to follow. But if you gave ma a map, I would have no problem to navigate through the most complex cities. I still today get left and right mixed up all the time. And my balance is crap.

The day I decided to drop out of school, one of my teachers asked me if I was dyslexic. I laughed at the idea. But when I later told my mother about what the teacher had told me, her jaw dropped. My mother could not believe she had missed it all those years.

Now I do believe it does give me a certain advantage in how I visualise things, and I believe this comes through in my songwriting. Writing the blogs is a passion of mine, but I would never consider my self being a writer. Songwriter? Yes. Writer? No.

But this feedback got me thinking how easy it is for us to criticise what others do, without even thinking that there might be more to the story. Are we so fixated in having everything perfect? In fact, isn’t the whole point of blogging that we can write, without the pressures of being a writer?

What I write, is never going to be perfect. Sure thing I could pay someone to proof read everything I write, but first of all, it would be an added expense, and second of all it would remove the immediacy. Maybe somewhere down the line we’ll get there, but right now it’s just me running the show here.

So let me leave you with this. I wrote a song about growing up with dyslexia called Read between the lines, and you can check it out HERE. This is something I try my best to work on or work around, but it will never stop me writing. And I hope that even with the mistakes, you are able to enjoy it.

J.P.

The author J.P. Kallio is a singer songwriter
To get EIGHT of his songs for free go HERE