Dear Writer,
Not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. Not gonna do it…
Oh, who am I kidding? We both know I’m gonna do it.
In America, we celebrated Independence Day yesterday and we’ve got a lot of reckoning to do with everything we have been since way before our much celebrated independence, but I don’t want to talk about because that’s not what we’re here for.
We’re here to write.
But independence is a good theme for writers, because sometimes we can be a little dependent on things we think we need, which we don’t, the most important of which is that little super-critical internal voice constantly telling us that nothing we do is ever good enough.
How about today, we declare independence from that? Because we think that we need that critical voice or everything we ever do will be bad, bad, bad but a) that’s not true and b) let’s maybe put the laser of our critical eye to that idea for a hot moment.
Why is it your job to be so goddamn exceptional all the time? Why do you always have to be The Best or it’s not good enough? There is a LOT of daylight between those two ideas, love, and it’s fun daylight. You’ll be shocked how fun it is.
So today, how about you declare your independence of the requirement that you always be excellent at everything? Allow yourself to live in the vulnerability of not doing everything so fucking great all the time.
And then take a moment of silence to sit with that idea and see how it feels. Does it feel as liberating to you as it does to me?*
I bet it does.
Everything,
L
*Terrifying and liberating are not mutually exclusive.