Until I Was Ten, I Thought I Was Fine...

 even though I've never been abled, so it wasn't really that I was much better off, physically.(more portable, perhaps
I mean, I could always see that other kids could move faster, or had more freedom, or things like that.  Sometimes I thought they were lucky, or maybe I'd want to switch with them for a day or so the way other kids might wonder about having different parents or a brother instead of a sister.

(And yeah, it was a little bit easier being in grade school, where other kids would...sometimes lose control somehow, and, well, if everybody you know has a set bedtime, it's easier to know there's not craziness you're not invited to.)
And, maybe,  if "well-meaning" adults, capitalism, and my other loving but distant relative the Media hadn't taken it upon themselves to grant me shame about the ways I stand out, I might have gotten shot down all the time. But maybe having people break you down pre-emptively isn't "Toughlove" or indeed, any kind of love at all, but just not being able to bear someone else's flash of confidence. Maybe it would have been better to get shot down blind, than to be endlessly prepped for it.

Not to sound like one of those crapzillions of articles and stories about the middle-aged lady who reconnects with her Inner Harriet the Spy and rediscovers her passions(as well as a notebook empire)

You Wouldn't Want A County Recorder Like Me...

 because keeping count has proven at least as hard as meeting the writing goal(once I got through last winter's caregiving problems, anyway) and I lost count a lot. So between the early undercounts and trying to compensate by padding through the fall--and knowing I wrote tons this year, I'm giving myself credit for meeting the 150,000 word writing goal I set with Dreamwidth last year.

If, technically, I did not.(I have dycalculia...if someone did somehow pick through and find me at slightly less, I suppose I'd accept their count.) But I didn't add to my clips this year, nor learn a valuable lesson by throwing myself at the buzzsaw of Rejection to toughen myself up, although i guess in one sense, it did help; the cycles of pain do get shorter with each rejection slip. There just isn't much  of a path forward in form-letter land.(If everyone thinks I am so amazing, say yes!)

I needed this win, plus I went to two craft classes this year and worked on technique more than I have in at least a decade, so I'm claiming those bragging rights.(Nothing is less braggy than three grafs of disclaimer, though.  "Could I be less into myself?" probably not without being an actual penitient or something.

So, yay, I did it, I think!