Do it anyway.

My quest to tame my inner critic.

There’s been something stirring in me for a long time now, an unmet need that’s been trying to figure out how to make it’s appearance. That urge is to bring out my creativity in some form, but thinking always gets in the way. I’m a chronic overthinker and intensely self critical. I can recognise this has improved, with time and age, but there’s still a part of me that feels like my teenage self in high school; self conscious, defensive and most of all, terrified of judgement or scrutiny. Even in starting to write I notice all the rabbit holes and tangents I could go on and subjects to explore, both on a personal and societal level. Maybe that’s the nature of our brains, we are hungry for knowledge and ideas and stimulation so our minds go wherever they want to go.

But anyway, coming back to my reasons for starting to write – this hunger is the part in me which is looking to tame or arrange my thoughts and ideas in some way. Put simply, I love to explore ideas, read books, mill them over and discuss them. Some of my deepest pleasures in life are: deep chats with friends, reading books, learning for pleasure and most of all, those moments when you can be so present in the here and now that you notice – “this is a significant experience” or “this is a good day”. One of the most powerful emotional regulation tools that I use is journaling to process my thoughts. I find that thoughts, feelings and experiences are transformed by bringing them out of the brain and onto paper (or keyboard). New perspectives can be found and I can make sense of ideas in a completely different way.

I have a tendency to very promptly quit anything which I am not objectively “good” at and I recognise that this has stopped me from doing so many things in my life and only keeps me in my comfort zone. Picture this – I sit down with enthusiasm to learn how to paint intricate models with my partner. Approximately three brushstrokes in I realise that it’s actually really hard to control the paint and might (shocker) actually take some patience and practise. I then proceed to have a toddler-esque meltdown exclaiming “Why am I so sh*t at everything?” and “I might as well just give up because I’m so average it hurts”. In the last few years, I have been deliberately trying things and continuing to do things, regardless of my performance. I continue to teach myself that doing things is the point of life and how good we are is typically completely irrelevant.

So, that is why I want to write. I want to confidently be imperfect and messy and do things anyway.

So here we go…