Fired: My Inner Critic

Most of us have heard the voice in our head.

Not the one that tells us how successful we will be, or how beautiful our creations are, but the other one.

The one that tells us, “Don’t bother painting, nobody will see” or “nobody likes what you write”, or “that blog is much better than yours”. Some days it is easy to ignore it, or turn it down so it becomes like static whispering.
On other days, for me, on the days, I am about to put a deep amount of passion into my project, the voice gets louder and louder. It is more persistent. There is no “shushing” it. If I let it, that voice will keep me from creating.
That’s when I decided to FIRE THE VOICE! (for me, it is an old bald man, wearing a sweater vest and glasses)
Here is the dismissal poem I gave to my inner critic:

Firing My Inner Critic

“I’m letting you go.
I’m saying good-bye to your harsh tones and your sandpaper words
that scrape away
the soft parts of my heart.
I’m turning away,
Leaving you standing with your arms crossed and
frown lines on your face
and tapping your foot.
Its not working for me
to have you shred my skin away and
expose the broken bones beneath
while
you hide under the bed
inside your glass house.
I’m letting you go.
I’m saying good-bye
before I pick up stones and
you and I are the same.”

He packed up his briefcase, rather reluctantly, walked out the door.
He does pop in from time to time, unwelcome and uninvited, and I send him back on his way.
Somedays, though, I beckon him. I ask him to come sit with me while I edit. He guides me then, ever so kindly. The inner critic can do things that I cannot do. He tosses out my precious lines when they aren’t quite right; he moves paragraphs, and kills of characters for the sake of the story. These are his strengths.
He has been fired from permanent employment. Now, he is just a brief consultant.