IGNITE: Inner Critic Takedown

I've always loved writing. As a kid, I wanted nothing more than to hide out in my basement writing stories about my cats. If my parents were concerned for my lack of sun exposure or socialization, they hid it well, and I was free to spend my days imaging grand cat adventures and playing with words.

Writing became an inextricable piece of my identity as I grew up. It was the thing I was good at. Math, hand-eye coordination, talking to (or even making direct eye contact with) boys- not so much. But writing. That was my wheelhouse.

I finally expanded my repertoire beyond cats, majoring in journalism in undergrad. This was possibly the beginning of the end.

The thing that had forever felt imaginative and freeing began to induce near-crippling anxiety, with questions like, "How will you make a living?" and demands that I go out and...you know...actually report things. Though I have gotten slightly better at making direct eye contact with men, I remain solidly an introvert. I hate almost all phone conversations. This is problematic when considering a career in journalism.

College was also the first great awakening--the first true blossoming--of my inner critic.

She is vicious and persuasive. She has convinced me that I cannot write, that I am a hack, that most of my thoughts are worthless, that I shouldn't bother to try, that I must put all creative aspirations out of my mind and work myself into oblivion at my "real" job. She is only truly pacified in a space of ladder-climbing professional career ambition.

She talks a lot of shit, and I'm here to take her down.