My Critic from Journal Spilling

I've been looking at the page that contains this exercise for a while. It's just been open on my desk. I finally decided to tackle it tonight, and the only thing I had in my mind was a magnifying glass. I so over-scrutinize, over-analyze and parse my work. It's exhausting. My critic got a name in the process: Scrooge. Tight-fisted, nose-to-the-grindstone, stingy, miserly Scrooge. The balance came in as I thought about how I measure myself against "better" artists. I'd love to say I thought of the verse in Daniel about the writing on the wall, but it was "A Knight's Tale" that brought the line to my mind: "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting." Painful words I have spoken to myself regularly.

So here's what I have to say to Mr. Scrooge: Dude, lighten up! It's just art.