I’m not talking about accidentally locking your keys in the car, or trying to drink water from a bottle while the cap is still on, or eating an entire family-size package of Oreos in one sitting just because it’s a rainy Saturday. No. I mean something so willfully and deliberately stupid it seems to unfold in slow motion—something you feel powerless to stop. Like trying to climb a high-tension electrical tower in the rain or picking out an engagement ring at Walmart. You know what I’m talking about, right? Now let me ask you this, shortly afterwards did you happen to hear a little voice calmly and resolutely call you a dumbass?

Well, that was me. I’m that little voice.

I know… I know, you think I’m a dreadful niggling nag. You think I delight in pouring salt on a wound. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But I do say nice things on occasion. It’s all a matter of perspective. If you like what I tell you, you call me an affirmation. If you find what I say interesting, you call me an insight. But if I point out that what you just did, whatever it was, was stupid enough to earn you a place in the bozo hall of fame, suddenly I’m a nag.

I need to be clear about one thing. I’m not your nag. I know that I’ve been speaking in the first person singular, but that isn’t quite right. There are billions of us. One huge chorus of individual, internal voices. I was assigned at birth to be the alter ego of an American writer. You have a little voice of your own. But, in the end, we’re all sort of one in the same.

“You may think I’m a dreadful nag, but I’m more important than you think.”

Just because each of us is only a small part of the whole, that doesn’t mean we’re insignificant. I’m more important than you think. Especially when it comes to creative people. Just as a theatrical play without an audience is little more than sheets of paper. An artist without a critic is like a light bulb without a socket. Luminescence is only possible with grounded, directional energy. Your little voice, your internal critic, me, I give you that. I put you in motion. I make you real.