Deliberately Ignoring My Inner Critic
Most people who will stumble across this article know who I mean. That little Antagonist who sits behind your eyes, looking at everything you do, listening to everything you say, and criticizing you for it. This is the voice that compels me to read every post on Slack three times before I hit enter and at least three more after I sent it. This is the voice that looks at every action I take as if it were on screen for the world to see.
In some ways the Antagonist is helpful, if you harness it. This is the voice that drives me to keep writing, because if I don't I will have let down myself and all the people the Antagonist thinks are watching me every moment of every day. So I sit down and write to show it that I'm not a sham, I'm actually doing this thing. It can be used as a source of motivation.
But for the most part it's a nuisance. I don't need an internal critic asking me why I haven't put my laundry away yet, or bugging me about an assignment that isn't due for another two weeks. I really don't need it making up dire social consequences for things that will never be seen by anyone else. Like, say, the way I squeeze my toothpaste.
So occasionally I do things specifically to show the antagonist who is in charge around here. There are domains into which it is not invited nor allowed. One of those is my ever-present pocket notebook.
When I started carrying a notebook at all times it got very little use, because what if someone saw what I wrote and judged me for it? said the Antagonist. So I left it mostly empty, only writing things that were important or deep or interesting. But I got sick of that after a while.
Now I intentionally write any and every blasted thing that comes into my head. I have no respect for the lines in the notebook. Sometimes my words take up one line, sometimes two, or five, or they go diagonally up and across the page. My pocket notebooks are a place where I can be creative or pedantic or just draw little pictures or write the physical details of someone I see on the train, so that I can use them in a story later. It doesn't matter. Nobody will ever see my notebooks but me, so they are specifically, assiduously, Antagonist-free zones.
And you know what really drives the Antagonist crazy?
Sometimes, I file away a notebook and start a new one before all the pages are filled.