December 2021
I am doing Meredith Lewis (@dangerousmere) daily creative prompt challenge and today it’s to face up to someone who has criticised or prevented us from our creative expressions.
That was an easy challenge for today’s prompt because it’s so evident in my life that the turning point for me was early in my career when I was in the Navy.
I was undertaking the Staff Course which is one of the most difficult courses to undertake because it involves a lot of reading, writing and presenting. At times, the sheer amount of work is overwhelming so it requires you to be working late into the night – along with attending other Navy functions required of you that it’s more like a rite of passage. This one was for Lieutenants which was considered the “lite” version but it’s an introduction of what’s to come for the ‘real’ staff course that came later.
Here’s the story of what happened because I tweeted about this back in 2019 and still to this day, remember it all as if it was yesterday.
I gave this particular Staff Officer, evil glares but can’t believe how much his words had hurt me at the time. Many years ago on Navy staff course, I was told by a Canadian officer “one could tell I was a foreigner from my terrible writing & never amount to anything in my career bc Im not from an English speaking background.” This feedback destroyed my confidence. He was a moronic fuckwit https://t.co/ur9UrixRFR I couldn’t believe he said that but as I was young and naive at the time, I took it to heart. I kept hearing his feedback on my head for years afterwards. It cut deep. Of course now, that’s all in the past. If I saw him again, I’d let him know my exact thoughts.
