I have a choice to motivate and inspire women into action to
change their lives through the medium of my writing, which is an amazing thing
to dream of doing; that is, until it no longer is a dream, but rather a
tangible thing. That is exactly what happened with the start of this blog; I
set out and my inner critic joined the party.
I had to find the right picture to add, have the perfect
thing to say or else nobody will be interested in anything I write; I needed to
plan it out, find a theme and captivate everyone with my pearls of wisdom… “Geez
this is a lot of work” says the mocking voice in my head
I start to write and suddenly I forget all the fantastic
things I was just thinking about saying; it was so incredible and insightful,
what was that again? “See, you don’t
know anything, what kind of a role model do you think you will be, can’t even
remember what you thought 5 minutes ago” she chimes in again.
No, I am going to do this I tell myself and am half
convinced too, when the voice pipes up from the depths again, “Sweetie, you are
not good enough to write anything, you don’t have a story to tell that anyone
would be interested in hearing. I think you are just looking for attention and
you think this will do it, well you are wrong, nobody is going to read this and
you will just be doing all this for nothing.
I am only telling you this for your own good Darling, I don’t want you
to get hurt and disappointed when it doesn’t work out like you want it to. I am
just keeping you safe from this cruel world, you know how nasty it is out
there.”
That’s about the time I usually start giving up a little,
but I keep trying regardless.
“Still at it hey? Well, that last draft was quite bland, if I
might just say so. Maybe you should tweak it a bit so it can be a bit more
appealing and fun. People will tear a bland post apart.” She comments. I am
sent into a flurry of editing and rewriting and rewriting again.
“If you include other stuff you have
written before, is it going to be relevant to the purpose of your blog, I mean,
will they actually want to read that? #Justsaying" she chirps and I begin to
doubt all of my thinking around my content and direction. “You don’t know what
you are doing Sweetie, why don’t you just leave that stuff to the professionals
and we can just carry on with our normal lives, you know, where we know what
will happen next and I can keep you safe from anything that they might want to
say about us.”
This is what our identity tries to do. It wants to throw you
off the path to your dreams because that life is everything that we do not know
how to deal with; that life is exposing us to our biggest fears and our
identity wants to protect us from the possible pain and suffering based on what
we have experienced before.
The fact that I am writing this blog now does not mean that I
have overcome my critic completely, but I did win on the part of getting
started. She is always there, sitting in the back of my mind, making her
sarcastic, critical little comments but I have the choice to listen to her, or
to follow my heart and have the life I would love. A little more every day I am
learning to choose what I would love above all the noise, and she tries harder
all the time to throw me off, but that’s
part of the journey, learning to accept that she is there reminding me of my “shortcomings”,
but not listening.
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