Editor’s note: This column was originally published on June 15, 2005.

I don’t take criticism well.

That may be an understatement.

Several months ago, I was covering a meeting that went into closed session. I was sick with a bad cold, and had morning sickness on top of it.

We were all made to stand out in the hallway during the closed session, where people congregated and made small talk. One of the gentlemen there came over to speak with me, and in the course of our conversation let me know that he really didn’t like the columns that I write that are published in this newspaper every week.

I was very taken aback. Up until this point I had only heard good things about my columns. It was hard for me to keep my composure, as I was already feeling pretty lousy. I just smiled and didn’t defend my writing, and let the comments go, as I am about as confrontational as a chickpea.

Later that same month, we received a letter in the mail, which was well written, and called for less family type opinion stuff, and more news in The Countywide newspaper. It was a valid piece of criticism, but it still hurt.

Last week my fellow columnist (who does in fact happen to be my husband) wrote about another piece of criticism we have received lately.

We do have three columnists in this newspaper that write regularly about family life. It’s my personal opinion that our opinion pages are strong – and a great number of our readers appreciate and can relate to what our columnists write about.

I understand that reading about childrearing and my sagas with scorpions are not everyone’s cup of tea – but I imagined that those people would just not read my column. I don’t read sports pages. I turn the channel when the sports coverage on the evening news comes on. I really have no interest in sports whatsoever. But I am in the minority, and so I would never complain about sports coverage in a newspaper or a television broadcast.

If the media were totally tailored to suit my preferences, there would be no Super Bowl, nobody would know that Britney Spears is pregnant, and there would be a lot more talk about which brand of disposable diapers are the best.

A lot of people would be unhappy if I was in charge of the media.

A community newspaper has a lot to offer its readers. News, opinion, sports – all of these are important to different people. The opinion pages have always been my favorite pages – it’s important to understand that the role of the opinion page is vastly different than the rest of the newspaper. What lies therein are opinions and ideas, not facts and dates and unbiased information, like you would find on the other pages of the newspaper.

I have to admit that I don’t really like having to write every week. When I started writing a column, it was just once every few months, and eventually I was encouraged by my boss to write every week.

It’s hard to come up with something new and different every week. It’s hard to look inside your life and put very personal things down on paper for other people to read. If I didn’t think somebody benefited from it, I wouldn’t do it. Sometimes what I write about myself (and my poor family) is downright embarrassing, but I think it’s healthy to admit that we are not perfect.

Some of the pieces I write get an extraordinary amount of positive feedback – these are often columns in which I express something that most of us are going through but we rarely share with one another. I think this is good.

I also believe that my columns do have local interest. I live here. When I write about my life I am writing about life in Karnes County through my eyes. I may not have been born here, but most people can’t tell.

It’s my nature to want to give up when I get criticized. I shed a few tears over this and other criticism, but was encouraged by friends and family not to let it bother me.

I truly hope that what I write week to week helps somebody who is reading it – by making them laugh, or letting them know they aren’t alone, or seeing something from a different perspective.

If I do that for even a handful of readers, I will keep writing.

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