spelling tuesday

I can't spell. I try, but I just...I cannot. I've gotten better at it over the years, but even still I find myself having to look up how many "r"s in embarrassed, how many "c"s in accommodate, and I always want to put a "d" in privilege for some reason. It's something about the way my mind works, I guess. I see the forest but not necessarily the individual trees, and so the idea is more important to me than which exact combination of letters it takes to convey it.

So, even though I've sort of accepted poor spelling as one of the things that makes me me, it still makes me feel bad sometimes, especially when I eventually find an error in something I slaved over and thought was perfect.

Whenever this happens, I try to remember what Winnie the Pooh said:

“You can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count.”

And honestly, this really does help. Spelling isn't everything, and sometimes it isn't anything at all.

What also helps is hearing that Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, John Keats, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and the guy who invented Scrabble were all horrible spellers too. I can't help it. Hearing This Side of Paradise being dubbed “one of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published" just makes me feel gud.

(Via)