The Inner Critic

1. Check site meter. Finally! Visits to my blog!
2. Make coffee
3. Drink lots of it while I obsess over what I've written
4. Panic
5. Can't think of a thing to write

Amateur. Freak. Boring idiot.
Let's just say the "Silence the Inner Critic" CD that I bought isn't working. It is a 15 minute meditation exercise that I'm supposed to do each day. It is supposed to eliminate the negative voices in my head to help me write better. The jacket on the CD says it will help free up my creativity so that the nasty inner voice doesn't sabotage my writing efforts. So far, it isn't working. But then again, I haven't actually listened to it each day. I can't seem to get around the voice in my head that tells me it's a bloody waste of time.

Fifteen minutes isn't very long. Nobody is that busy that they can't take 15 minutes out of their day to meditate and change their lives for the better. That's what the CD jacket says and I believe it. I know meditation works. The problem is that when I try to meditate, I fall asleep. And if the nap lasts more than 30 minutes, I get stuck in a dream world and cannot wake up. Seriously, last week while listening to my new CD, I fell asleep and an innocent little nap turned into a freakin' nightmare. It's not the first time that it has happened. In fact, it happens every time I take an afternoon nap.

My naps are best described as a really bad drug trip. Now of course at this point I can't pretend that I'm Not Boring and that I have actually Taken Drugs, but I DID grow up in the 1970s. I would like to go on record as saying that the made-for-television movies back then were pretty bad. Rainy Saturday afternoons were spent watching confusing psychedelic movies in which dancing women waved their arms as if doing the back stroke to funky music. The predominant colours were pink and orange and they swirled on the walls like the giant lollipops you find in a specialty candy store. Well, that's what my meditation naps are like. Only they are scary. Really, nightmare, bad trip, scary.

During my last Silence the Inner Critic Meditation attempt, I fell asleep right near the end and got trapped in a sleeping hell. Now I know that describing one's dreams is classified as the Nobel Prize of Boring, so I will keep it brief. Suffice it to say that there were a lot of colours, everything was super huge and my body was being dragged across the floor toward a mob of evildoers.
Think Apocalypse Now.
Soilent Green.
Slaughterhouse Five.
To make matters worse, I actually know I am napping. Last time, I could hear Mark in the kitchen making coffee and in my head I was screaming for him to wake me up.

That's why I can't meditate. Or nap.
If someone out there knows of a way to Silence the Inner Critic that doesn't involve closing my eyes, please let me know. If it can be done without the Critic knowing, even better.