I remember during junior year of high school, our class read an essay by Mark Twain about how once you learn a trade, it’s harder to enjoy the things you used to before you knew so much. I remember one of the examples in the essay was about how when a doctor sees a young woman with flushed cheeks, he only sees the fever and not the beauty of the color.

I find now that, for the most part, that is true of my two passions– singing and writing.

Bad writing is perhaps a little more fundamental than bad singing. If something is just flat-out written unintelligibly, it is difficult to read even if you have only a rudimentary grasp of the written word.

But then there are little, nit-picky, grammar nazi things that even someone who considers him or herself a good writer might miss. For instance, many people simply do not know the difference between each other and one another. No, they are not synonyms. Each other refers only to two people, while one another is for three or more. Hence, Jesus asked us to love one another, not each other. That is one of the many things I am constantly telling the people at my work, and something I frequently find in popular novels that makes me flinch.

Or, I shiver when I see which when a writer means that. That is used when the information following is necessary; which is used when the information is unnecessary.

Needless to say, these frequent mistakes that pop up even in heavily edited popular novels, and they cause me to pause, shudder and, sometimes, turn to Robert and complain. However, it also fills me with glee when I realize my favorite author can properly use the word presently (which more closely resembles soon than currently).

Singing is a little bit harder for me to just sit back and enjoy than writing. For one, there are extremely popular, wealthy singers who I think have absolutely atrocious voices. It’s also more grating to me when I encounter bad singing, and it seems more common than bad writing.

Sometimes I wish that I could just sit back and enjoy the singer who everyone else says is just phenomenal. But no. Thanks to my admittedly somewhat snobby, black and white training, I can’t. All I can hear is that bad, wonky, slow vibrato that fluctuates far too much in pitch to be pleasant on the ear (even in 20-something singers… scary!! That type of voice is usually reserved for old singers).

It’s so bad sometimes that there’s this one singer who occasionally sings at my church whom I dread hearing, all because I can’t stand her technique. Her chin shakes uncontrollably (a sure-fire sign of harmful tension) and every note wobbles up and down.

But the untrained ear just hears, “Wow, this person can actually hit the notes, so s/he has a nice voice.”

Sometimes I do just try to turn it off. But it isn’t so simple. It’s too hard just to ignore everything I have learned.

Everything comes with a price, I guess.