Bitterness And Forgiveness

A few years ago when I was a new writer starting out in this whole writing game, I had just gotten out of uni and had written a published research paper that I had done entirely on my own. I have a knack for writing. But that’s where the problem is for me. I had never been quite good at anything in my life, so when I found that I was quite a good writer, I decided to micro-focus on it and write on every occasion that I can. I then had the pleasure of working on a web copy (and did quite a good job) despite it being my first run at it, and though it wasn’t anything big, it managed to inflate my ego so much that I thought I was the best writer in my city and that no one else can say otherwise unless they’re qualified.

I know, very cocky, but that was just who I was.

I had then gotten a part-time writing job for a local production house who were willing to pay me money to write for them! Exciting stuff right? It was, but everything went south because I had let my ego get to me. My boss was very demanding and had high expectations of me, and that’s entirely reasonable, but the problem was that I had other expectations and had never fully committed to the job I signed on to do and had ended up doing quite a terrible job at it which led to many frustrating hours. How long did I last at that job? Well, about a week. Imagine that, a writer who had managed to write and publish a research paper all on his own ended up getting fired because his writing wasn’t all that great.

It’s a huge blow if you ask me.

But then there was another problem; I had shifted the blame entirely on my employer and thought that they didn’t have a good idea of what great writing is and that they underpaid me for my services and all that jazz. So then I went for quite a while without a job because thanks to my pride and my ego, I had refused to even acknowledge the fact that I had worked in that little production house in the first place. I’ve told this story many times before and had left out all my wrongdoings and told it from my perspective only.

And even though since then I’ve managed to improve myself and had gotten to the point where I had gotten the chance to work with people like Brilliant Liu, written for numerous small and big brands alike, and most recently, Disney and National Geographic, I was bitter. I didn’t know this until just a few days ago but I could see now looking back that I had been harboring resentment and bitterness toward my previous employer all this time and that was the reason why I was so eager to work on projects. It had gotten to a point where I was reminded of my past mistakes whenever I would come across people with a similar work ethic as my previous employer and I would then grow more and more defensive, ruining that working relationship even more just because I was bitter.

So I reached out to them.

I apologized for my past mistakes and though it took me quite some time to arrive at the realization that I wasn’t being the best writer I could be when I was working for her, and that I was way too egotistical at that point in time to have worked with anyone and I’m beyond grateful that they even took the gamble and tried to hire me. To my surprise, it had been so long that they had even forgiven my wrongdoings! Time heals all things, that much is true, but that’s not the full story. You need to do something on your end to really fully heal from the things in your past that had hurt you in any way for time to make any progress on your healing. For me, that lesson was a bitter pill to swallow, and the second I sent that text, I felt relieved. It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I can breathe again. I now look forward to touching the keys again and typing out great articles (or try to do so).

Forgiveness is a powerful thing. It may not seem like it in the heat of the moment, but as someone who has the temper of a fickle deity, I myself needed time to clear my head and finally let things go. If there’s anything you can take away from this article, then maybe it’s time for you to let things go too. Maybe that’s why you’ve been feeling so stuck in your path, whatever it may be, and maybe you’re harboring some bitter resentment for someone in your life. Try to let that go, because if anything, bitterness will poison you and everything you do. Try and let it go.