As a kid I hated writing

I was forced to write at least half-a-page. Daily. On vacation.

My parents used to send me to the countryside ever since I could walk. I lived with my granpa and granma in a summer house for as long as 6 months a year. When school began, my stay got shorter – only 3 months. And every day I had to fill half-a-page with any sort of text… What happened the day before, what I expect to happen next… Anything.

I remember sitting at the kitchen’s table with a thin Soviet notebook and a very specific mass-produced ballpen. No idea what to write about. I hated every minute of it. My parents thought that such training would benefit my grades in Russian and Literature… And my grades were far from perfect, from decent, even from reasonable.

Needless to say this practice didn’t do me any good. Grades didn’t go up. And apart from that I’ve developed a sincere disgust for anything related to writing and reading.

Constant “You’re not reading enough” and “You’re not practising writing enough” made me avoid anything that involved patiently sitting at the desk and keeping brains engaged.

Yet, the habit stuck. And it was years later when I’ve discovered that I read and I write more that anyone I know. It hadn’t made my life any easier though…