Make It Before You Judge It

There's a moment that happens almost every time I sit down to write.

It doesn't matter how long I've been doing this.

It doesn't matter how many pages I've written, how many things I've shared, how many times I've pressed publish, the moment still comes.

I open the document, I type a sentence, maybe two, and then almost immediately a voice shows up.

"This isn't good.

Who do you think you are? No one needs to read this.

No one cares." It's incredible how fast it arrives.

Before the piece even exists, before there's anything to really judge, the judgment is already there.

And if I'm honest, for a long time, I believed it.

I thought the discomfort meant something was wrong, that if writing felt this vulnerable, this exposed, then maybe I shouldn't be doing it.

Maybe the voice was trying to protect me from something.

But over time, I started to notice something.

The voice wasn't responding to the quality of the work.

It was responding to the act of being seen.

Because writing, at least for me, isn't about putting words on a page.

It's about letting other people into my mind, letting them see how I think, how I feel, what I question, and that can feel intimate, uncomfortably so.

I think anyone that's ever created anything can feel that.

There's a particular type of insecurity that comes with creative work.

It's not like completing a task where the outcome is clear.

It's not like solving a problem with a right answer.

It's offering something that is subjective, personal, and open to interpretation.

And once it's out there, it doesn't belong to you in the same way anymore.

People will read through it with their own lens.

Some will resonate, some won't.

Some will misunderstand it entirely.