#!@$... a spelling mistake! Thank you for letting me know.

The following is the original and the rewrite can be found by clicking here.

I have been blogging in earnest for about two years now and my reasons are simple; articulate my expertise as someone who can solve Sales & Marketing problems and become a better writer. 

I will be the first to say I will never be a great writer, but I do believe I can be a good writer and maybe even a very good story teller; I've been encouraged to this end because when I look back at my body of work I can see improvement, and I've also been told by people I respect that I am getting better. 

With all of this said, the bane of my writing experience so far is proof reading, and by extension, spelling mistakes!

This point was illustrated in glorious fashion with a recent "re-post" on beBee entitled Never lose your sense of wonder, or in other words...  where a misspelled word slipped through... and worse still, the error was in the "title".  It seems that the word "lose", which means "to no longer have", changes to something completely different when you add an extra "o" and the word becomes "loose".

This is exactly what happened when I published the original post, and in effect asked people to Never "fasten tightly" your sense of wonder; I suppose the title would work if the subject matter was about never committing to a sense of wonder, but it wasn't... and worse still, I was oblivious to all of it. 

That was until two people let me know about my error. It was then I simply said to myself, "Ugh... I better fix this".

I have come a long way from internalizing this sort of thing, and using it to identify ability and self worth; I now just see it as a problem that needs to be rectified. I will admit it was really irritating and a glaring reminder to improve my proof reading ability, but three minutes later, with the rogue "o" removed and the proper meaning restored, I was happily back to my oblivious self.

With the mistake behind me, I could not help but turn to the fact that someone, more than one someone in fact, took the time to let me know that I had made a mistake. They did it with respect, and even a little concern that I may be upset that they had pointed it out; I was not, more to the contrary, I really appreciated it.

Is there a point here regarding getting better at proofing when you write or the value in learning from your mistakes... there sure is. However, what this experience has offered me was the opportunity to pause and appreciate those people who not only read what I write but take the time to engage, and help me become better at what I am doing. Maybe it is an aspect of beBee (the social media site I am on), or that people generally want to help, or possibly the "luck of the universe" was on my side that day... whatever the reason, I want to simply say, "Thank you".

And one last thing, until the end of my days, I will never confuse "Lose" and "Loose" again.

iamgpe

PS: Please let there be no spelling mistakes.