you people all seem so smart. you know so many things, so many words, you always have things to say, even though you don’t even like being alive.
while i, even though i don’t hate life as much as you do, have never figured out how to become smart no matter how much i tried. i think that the vocabulary that i use is no bigger than one thousand words. i have been trying to find ways to learn to write better over the past few months but it was all for nothing.
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Some are better at math but you could make it a morning sticky note routine. New word everyday. There’s an underbelly of freaks in society (people obsessed with scrabble) that do this compulsively
But I mean, it’s more fun the weirder the word is.
i think that i also have to learn grammar, writing style, and composition
one month ago i even ended up in chats where people do writing sprints, and people always noticed me there and said hello to me. and eventually i explained my problem and asked where should i start. and one writer, a lady that writes novels set in ancient greece, told me that i should “drill down to the basics.” and she didn’t clarify at all what that means, so i ran away and never came back there.
One of the easiest ways to learn is just by copying others. Watch the way people write things or the way they speak and just try to pick it up that way.
Additionally some of us are ‘literate’ in the sense that we’re well educated, have univ degrees, and/or are also well read…like me. So we can draw from that knowledge we gained.
It takes time to acquire wisdom, so don’t expect to develop good skills overnight.
Some of us really care about words and try to be as articulate as possible (though not always). There are other people who try to sound intellectual, throwing in too many big words that creates a lot of confusion.
I used to do that when I was in my late teens until I dived into philosophy. The way some philosophers write, like Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, Morris Berman and others have brought me to tears because some of their texts are so beautifully written, similar to poetry.
I also realized the key is to convey the truth as simply and as clearly as possible. Then later you can learn to add complexity and ‘big words’ when needed.
Also we make mistakes all the time, sometimes I mess up my grammar but spelling is easily fixed with built-in spell-checkers.
Reading a lot of books helps too. Try also randomly going through a thesaurus or dictionary out of interest helps to expand one’s vocab.
But it is a good idea to get the basics down, forming logical thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, it’s a good idea to learn the rules of grammar and logic as well.
your comment gives more answers than i could have expected.
though i am not sure what i was expecting when i wrote this question. i don’t remember what was going through my mind back then.
i was browsing through my grandparents’ books and i have found there a few books for learning languages, but they were outdated, they teach how to use a language that isn’t in use anymore, an older way of writing. i took some of the books and then i had to reorganize my drawers and shelves, because i was misusing them and i didn’t have a place for those books. things have escalated from there and i cleaned and sorted many more things and now i still have to sort some things on the computer.
after writing this question and staring at it for a bit i started to look for books online for learning all of those things that i mentioned, and it turned out that there do indeed exist books about words, vocabulary, grammar, writing style, and composition. but there also exist books that are solely dedicated to singular tasks like writing a good sentence, or a good paragraph. i also found books about notetaking, journaling and academic writing, and there are books about storytelling, books about creating characters for fiction writers.
somehow it hasn’t crossed my mind to simply look for books about those things. i asked google how to learn this stuff but google did neither provide me the kind of answer that you have, or direct me to all those books.
i have been trying to find a way to learn this stuff for a few years now, and i always did something stupid and never actually managed to get any good answers.
i think that people simply always assumed that i can’t be this dumb. to not know that there are books about this. but i can. when i recall the schools that i was forced to go to, i am quite amazed by the fact that i managed to survive and that i am still alive. the language teachers there were evil and cruel and they mainly just forced me to read some old books that they concluded to be important or something. one of those schools was just an outright prison, there were grilles on the windows, fences inside, and in all those schools teachers checked many times per day who is in the classroom and who isn’t. and then they added up the amount of times that each person was in school or something. so yes, there do indeed exist places in the world where it isn’t possible to become anything other than dumb.
your answer helped me to understand, to realize many things. thank you for taking the time to write it, though i think that i am the person least deserving attention here. there are all those other people here who just keep killing themselves and i just can’t stand it. i always wish that i could write something to make this stop, but i don’t know what to write, and everyone always says that trying to get people not to kill themselves isn’t the right thing to do.
i will be now browsing through those books, and i will try to learn all of those things that i always wanted. i was completely stuck when it came to learning languages. i can understand english quite well, but i was never able to write well in any language at all.
Because ignorance is bliss
knowledge is pain, learning is pain, at the heart of all our attempts to better ourselves; pain.
I’ve read, so much it’s obscene (and some obscene content), the reason is that in the world I live I am very lonely. Even around others, I am a singular and isolated creature. Reading gives me some clues into how others work. What I struggle to understand is the lack of the compulsive defensive need to study others.
People also confuse complexity with intellect, which is why I suspect I’m just needlessly complex, not smarter or better adapted at all.
Some researchers claim that education beyond primary school is associated with higher levels of completed suicides. If this is so, it might account for what you see on here.
I have learned more about the written word since I have been on here. Trying to express ourselves on this difficult subject has that effect.
Please keep writing.