I'm getting a little depressed about my writing and wondering why I'm even doing it. Maybe I need to list all the times people have told me what a good writer I am.

Grade school memories

2 poems of mine were published in the local paper, The Garden Isle. Hardly an accomplishment since I grew up on a rock in the middle of the pacific ocean with a total population of 35,000, but still, I got to see myself in print at an early age.

My fourth grade teaching assistant, who was at my school interning from Chico State University, made us write commercials. He told me I wrote good dialogue. But then again, he also taught us Esperanto, so what does he know.

In my six grade english class, my teacher made us a write a story and then had our stories individually bound and donated them to the school library. I wonder if it's still there.

My sixth grade teacher also made us write our own hawaiian style legends at camp on weekend up in the mountains. My legend was published in the local paper. I'm sure the island folks were thrilled.

High school memories

7th grade english teacher made us write an inclass fantasy story. I wrote a story abou shoes and where shoes go when they die. My cousin, who's six years younger than me, told me my 7th grade english teacher read my story to his class as an example of a good creative story.

At graduatiion, they handed me the English award for my class. I went to small (800) public high school, so I'm not sure what this award really means, other than I did get $100 to spend.

The rest of my life

A press release for a concert I was promoting at Stanford University was published in the campus paper. They printed the release verbatim. It's a university paper, I think they'd print anything.

A press release for a race I was promoting made it to the front page of the Outdoors section of the Chronicle. Finally after two years, they printed something of mine.

I ghost wrote the deacon column in my church monthly newsletter and people told the head deacon, they loved my articles. It's a small church, what can I say.

I wrote up the special brunch menus for my friend's restaurant and people love it. How much can go wrong writing up descriptions of food.

I wrote up a bunch of flyers for the church singles group I joined for awhile. The minister in charge of the group, Dana, loved them, and so did the people in the church. But like I said earlier, it's church people.

I published an article on the ultra marathon race I was promoting in UltraRunning magazine. It's a running magazine, anyone could submit articles.

I did get misquoted in a SF Examiner article on ultramarathoning once, but who the hell cares about ultra marathoning?

My acting teacher, John, who is supposedly this ultra famous acting teache, said I was a good writer. All of friends who have interviewed for acting schools and acting programs here and on the east coast, said that everybody knows John. John taught at ACT for 12 years and he knows Annette Benning and Danny Glover, and is well respected on both coasts in acting circles. But he's an acting director, what does he know?

More church stuff. I wrote a prayer for the people and read it at a service one Sunday. Some nice looking guy who I'd never seen before came up to me afterwards and told me, my prayer really moved me. Then Pam, who was on the worship committee and an editor at Harper Collinss, came up to me and said she really like my prayer and requested a copy for the church files. I was like OH MY GOD. Pam was classmates with Hilary Clinton in college at that Seven Sisters school, whose name I can't remember right now. Pam worked for all the top notch publishing houses in NYC before moving out here. Pam liked my prayer. And Pam is so articulate and well spoken and so east coast in speech and manner. That woman spearks in grammatically correct and perfect sentences at all times. Pam would know wouldn't she? Or is this just because it's a small church?

I wrote and performed a story I'd written called Art is Scary. About 30 people were there, most of whom I didn't know. People loved my performance and three people, two guys and one woman said they loved me story.

And finally, I got a fanmail from someone who'd read my blog and was kind enough to tell me.

I'm not sure if I feel better, but I think I need to keep writing I guess.