i'd rather keep going

on using criticism as fuel

My partner is the first person that I go to when I finish a piece of writing. I tiptoe towards them, shy, disrupting whatever article they’re skimming or record they’re playing or salad they’re eating. Usually, I’m greeted by a — sometimes impatient, always expectant — “You ready to share it?” I nod, give a disclaimer that it’s just a first draft, and hover while they peruse the page, holding my breath through the brow furrows, the keyboard clicks, the mumbling and murmuring. More often than not, they affirm me, and if I’m lucky, shower me with superlatives, too. Whether or not I admit it, that validation often fuels me to publish.

Yesterday, I wrapped a piece just as they sauntered through the front door. In lieu of a hello, I chirped: “Can you read this?” It was a little less buttoned-up than my usual writing, a little whinier. Still, I thought it was well-written.

A few minutes passed, and then: “This reads like a diary entry. Does that make sense?”

Ignoring the anvil in my belly, and the heat in my cheeks, I slowly shook my head no. (I’m fluent in praise, but my criticism is rusty.) They launched into a spiel about how it just fell flat; unlike my other writing, it didn’t really say anything meaningful or spark any particular emotion in them as a reader.

I thanked them for the feedback and waited until later to bawl in the bathroom. They didn’t know that they’d just delivered a eulogy for that essay, my future essays, and my sense of self.

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Criticism is clamorous and heartbreaking and none of the boxes that I’ve built to contain it are right-sized. It is my own Cerberus — snarling, scary, a nightmare personified. At my big age, it still renders me defensive and hostile. Worst of all, it has historically compelled me to quit whatever thing garnered the criticism in the first place.

The bulwarks of my grudges, infinite and impenetrable, are constructed from all of the negative feedback that I’ve ever received; the embarrassment of having tried at all, my mortar.

Years ago, I enrolled in university with the intention following a journalism track. Writing is what I’m good at, and making a career of it felt like the obvious choice. While I was coming from a creative writing background, the pivot into more technical writing felt possible (and necessary to land a job). After class, I’d spend hours bowed over my jerry-built dorm room desk, struggling to dilute tragedies — car wrecks, suicide bombings, natural disasters — into neat bylines. There were always too many words.

My then-professor was adamant that I was making a mistake in pursuing journalism as a career. “Your writing is too fluffy,” she’d insisted. “You won’t make a good journalist,” she all but swore. I admittedly disassociate when people tell me things that I don’t won’t to hear, so I’m unsure if she rounded out her statement with a softer landing like, “…but you’ll make a great storyteller.” All I heard was that my words weren’t worth the paper they were scribbled on, and that I’d better switch gears before I rendered myself unemployed.

At that point it was too late to drop the class, but it wasn’t too late to fail. And fail I did. What was the point in trying for someone who’d already deemed me inapt and unfit to meet my goals? (This wasn’t the only reason that I didn’t graduate, but it certainly played a part in the premature expiry of my academic career.)

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When I am critiqued, at my request or unprovoked, lovingly or frigidly, breathing becomes impossible. Anxiety caulks my ears, throat, nostrils like ice water and I am drowning. My critic, drunk with supremacy, palms my scalp, and with every suggestion, every strikethrough, every sigh, pushes me deeper into the gusty sea.

Some of you may remember GTFO, a small travel agency that I started in 2022. Like writing, traveling thrills me, and I was keen on building itineraries for people who thirst to swill more of this world. Merrily, I lived vicariously through strangers who’d followed my suggestions to zipline the jungles of Yucatan, soar through the skies above Cappadocia, and tread the waves of Lake Atitlán. The testimonials were radiant and rolled in before I could request them; I was giddy at the idea that I’d finally unearthed my ever-elusive “thing.” But then, a lone disgruntled customer. Someone who, “couldn’t believe that I charged them for this.” Then, a refund. Then, the drowning, the humiliation, the quitting, and a byline of the perfect length: Girl can’t get anything right.

GTFO lived for a whopping three months before I banished it to the ossuary of dreams past. The tomb is chockfull of fallen, festering things, aborted before the air touched their lungs — instruments (where’s your rhythm?!), cleats (you’ve gotta be faster than that!), pots and pans (there’s way too much cumin in here.). I’ve exclusively blamed my pundits for the deaths of my desires, their critiques intentionally unkind and targeted — daggers fashioned for my demise.

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But yesterday, through the salt of snot and tears, I allowed myself to consider that, maybe, all critiques aren’t attacks on my skill or character.

(I know. Shocking.)

Perhaps the true menace is my sensitivity — spineless, blinding, and all-consuming. Or my sense of shame, triggered by even the most featherlight of feedback. I weighed the embarrassment of trying against the embarrassment of giving up from a single opinion and picked up the pen to write this. Will I ever publish the piece that I wrote yesterday? Unlikely. Am I embarrassed to have written it at all? Absolutely. Will I ever become more receptive to criticism? We’ll see.

Perhaps the sea of angst will quell. Perhaps the water will remain pulse-pounding in its tumultuousness. Perhaps it’s time that I learn how to swim anyway.