2025, dec 6 - shed the temptation to become a critic; the critical part

[droqen]

i appreciate a good critical eye and if i open those floodgates in my mind i can criticize very harshly! recall this ugly heap of me criticizing wombat's gutwhale.

i have criticized many things but i'm not sure analytic criticism is a particularly useful or expressive medium for me. i look even at Steam reviews as an art form.

i know plenty of people who are good at criticism and i admire them, their ability to share relevant critical details. such admiration has always tempted me to share, too, my own criticisms of things. look at my past year of public-facing communications! all criticism and breakdown.

[droqen]

i wonder if i would be better off not trying so hard to master and practice something like being critical, even knowing it is possible or even useful to do so. do i need to be able to rationally present a justification for changing something? does that even make sense?

rather than becoming a useful serious critic, an analyst the likes of which i see and admire in other people, i could perceive this form of critical expression as beyond me. not my thing.

in so doing i can understand also what other people do, others' criticism, as not the same in kind as the criticism of those i know and love for their ability to form the cutting and insightful arguments, or even simple neutral observations which to me appear, incorrectly, laced with connotation.

this is large part of what makes me a poor critic: i cannot escape reading into things what is not there. to criticize, in the way that i admire, i must see things neutrally, as they are.

i see too many ghosts haunting that flicker in and out of existence.

[droqen]

those ghosts can remain in the mind, where the mental structures are hazy enough to support ideas that may or may not be true, they can live internal and fuel me.

on the outside i will inscribe memories and realizations. wondrous lenses. things that i can look back on and reconnect with, glowing. the sky is always very beautiful to me.