I am always creating something. I am the kind of person who is thinking nonstop about new things to write, new photo opportunities, and all kinds of other random ideas and projects. The problem is, I never tend to publish the majority of what I come up with. I never like any of it, due to being some odd mix of procrastinator and perfectionist. In a way, I am my own worst critic.
Everything I create starts off as a good idea. However, once I sit down to begin typing, start filming, or start sketching out my ideas, things go downhill. As I work, I begin to find flaws in what I have created. Reading something I have typed up, I find a multitude of errors, or phrasings that sound odd. I have to force myself to publish the content, otherwise, I would get nothing done. Indeed, this is the very reason I update so rarely on this site. There are quite a few articles on this very site listed as “draft” for nearly a year. These articles are likely to never see the light of day, yet they are mostly finished. They are in a purgatory, cursed to never be published.
It isn’t that I don’t like what I do; after all, this is a hobby, not a main job. No, it really boils down to me often not feeling like what I create is good enough. I feel like everyone will hate what I make. Blame any number of factors in my youth, it really doesn’t matter; the point is, I am hyper critical of my own creations.
I love what I create, and I enjoy looking at the diversity of my interests, compared to the one-track mentality that I see for people in my day to day life. I love that I can talk to one person about Final Fantasy, another person about neutron stars, and a third person about something as normal as puppies, without any of those conversations feeling out of place or forced to me. That extends to my creative works as well, and I love what I make, but something in the back of my mind says none of it is good. It seems to hate everything I make.
Simply put, I am my own worst critic. Since I can’t block myself from my own thoughts, I just have to fight through the temptation to avoid posting my works. Indeed, even this article, as useless as it is, is an activity in fighting through my own dislike of publishing what I write. Maybe I am trying to force myself to post everything I can, since this article is one that really shouldn’t be cared about by anyone.
Funny thing is, if you are reading this far, then you do care to read it, which means, I was wrong. More correctly, that critical side of me was wrong, as it most often is.
Someone want to tell the little critic in my head to shut up?
I liked this article. Shut up, inner critic!