Journal CableModemSniper's Journal: in retrospect 2
Why does everything I write read like absolute crap when i go read it again? This is a serious question, I don't want a bunch of "cuz u suk" responses, allthough if i get any responses at all, that is probably what they will be. When I am writing something, anything, I always seem to be doing fine. Yet I wait a few days or hours and read it again and I sound like inarticulate moron. I don't get it. Shouldn't I notice my stupidity beforehand? Oh well. Back to hitting refresh for no good reason.
Even one's native language is a translation (Score:2)
I read a fairly decent explanation of this phenomenon in a semantics book whose title I forget. I imagine I'll not do this subject justice, due to the very explanation itself, but I'll do my best.
In short, everyone appears a little bit more dumb to the outside world than they do to themselves. This is because all ideas are abstract, and language is a cludge which attempts to communicate ideas. Being abstract, all ideas have peripheral concepts and experiences behind them which cause them to have meaning. If something is particularly poignant and meaningful to you: Say, a recent rambling from a fellow on Slashdot who simply couldn't get his point across. While caught with inspiration from that and other experiences coming together, you write a treatise expressing an epiphany. If you fail to properly add the peripheral information that made that epiphany quite so insightful, however, it will fall flat to all who read it. Further, as you drift further from the time you originally wrote that piece, your inspiration and the peripheral thoughts themselves fade. Therefore, much of the color you silently added to the material you had written, as you read it before, simply isn't there anymore. You may have forgotten it, or it might seem quite as relevant anymore.
There's also the problem of certain words and turns of phrases having slightly different meanings to different people -- even to the same person over time. But I doubt that has an effect on what you stated. More of an effect on what you're reading just now.
So there's my almost certainly inelegant explanation which will undoubtably make me appear less intelligent than it would seem to me at first.
Cuz U.... (Score:1)
Anyway, I think it's normal that something you write that looks fine now, you'll look at it later and say "good goddamn, WTF was i THINKING?" Personally, I try to look at it in hindsight.
Honestly, I'm more of a person who tends to rush into things without thinking (yeah, imagine that!) and as a result i get screwed up badly. Nevermind that I have some quirk about me that makes me insanely dwell over the most minute mistake i make.
Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass, who knows?
Bottom line, i think its common for people to be critical over work they produce. But don't stress over it.