The Trauma

In 2nd or 3rd grade in elementary school, we had a contest where we competed to see who could read the greatest number of books. I had extreme difficulties with concentration and couldn't really read, so I read no books, and my best friend B. read something like 500 books or something ridiculous. I took it as an utter defeat. I felt like a complete failure and I never read another book until almost my 18th birthday. I read the Dhammapada when I was 16 or 17, and a few years earlier I think I read two books by Anthony Robbins. That was about the extent of my reading for my entire life up until that point. I had read the lines to Macbeth and to Oliver Twist in elementary school, because I played the part of Banquo in Macbeth in the 5th grade and also played Fagin in Oliver Twist in the 6th grade. Otherwise I read almost nothing. I maybe read a bit of poetry, by e.e. cummings and Lord Alfred Tennyson.

In any case, the situation with the reading contest that I experienced as complete existential failure, I experienced as trauma, and it affected me for the rest of my life. It still affects me today. It's become part of who I am as a person, going through those difficulties. I still have trouble at times with my concentration, for various medical reasons, of a neurological nature.


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The Arts

I also became fluent in the creative arts in my lifetime, with accomplishments in writing, in music and sound design, as well as in painting and digital design. My father was a professional painter, so I learned the visual arts early on in life. I always had a coach in the arts. I ended up getting a degree in Computer-Assisted Sound Design in the late 1990s. I've been doing Ambient Experimental Sound Design ever since, as well as writing, performing, and recording music, analog and digital. I've also written over a thousand pages of poetry and thousands of pages of fiction and non-fiction. I have written dozens of novellas, and several full-length novels. I have lengthy philosophical essays. More on that later.


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Computer Programming

Computer programming is something that I'm probably going to talk quite a bit about because in the last phase of my learning journey, from about eight years ago, I began learning computer programming and theoretical computer science, which has contributed a great deal to my literacy story. I would never say that someone should be forced to learn computer programming, though at least some knowledge of computers is useful if possible. It's not always possible, I understand that. There can be many complex situations such as refugee status, or a child being sick, or for whatever reason someone is struggling with learning objectives, meeting certain milestones. I would say according to society, language, and culture, and especially just to CONTEXT, realistically. I must say that I am become a humanist and liberal arts and humanities fanatic. My fields are ART | HISTORY | PHILOSOPHY.


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Accomplishments

I just want to say that my story of literacy is that I struggled with it extremely. My struggles with reading had a profound impact on me growing up. The story, though, is of overcoming this great difficulty. Through sheer work and perseverance I overcame all my difficulties and reached the point where I could read and understand 1000-page highly technical or philosophical documents. I had achieved a pretty high level of numeracy. I learned computer programming and theoretical computer science from 2012 on, mostly using MOOCs in the beginning, massive open on-line courses. I took courses in many fields of mathematics as well. One day, I couldn't read more than one or two sentences at a time and another day years later, I was reading large abstract works of philosophy and critical theory, other more technical documents, etc., as well as producing a body of literary work spanning thousands of pages. I've written poetry, fiction, mostly novellas and novels and non-fiction, such as philosophical essays, or discourse analysis, content analysis, etc.

The story is of overcoming hardship. Not of bragging. It was really hard, but with grit and determination I was able to go from functional illiteracy to independent scholar over the course of 20+ years. It's meant to inspire and give hope to those who struggle with literacy.


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.

A Story Of A Literacy

I read maybe one or two books in their entirety before I was 18. I only really started seriously reading when I was in my early twenties. Growing up I had a terrible reading disability. My learning disability had to do with concentration as well as word-retention or verbal memory, among many other things. This blog is an exploration of that learning process, that development process over the years. It is "A" Story of Literacy, of my literacy story but also a Story of "aliteracy".


A.G. (c) 2020. All Rights Reserved.