This semester I have to write a book of poetry for my Honors Independent Study course. For the past few days, I've been revamping old poetry for this larger body of work which is tentatively titled "New and Selected Poems." I've found an old computer disk with Microsoft Works files, so with MS Word in use now, I can't tell what the poem is until I open the file. And believe me, I've written some really dodgy poetry in my past.

Granted fellow Whimster Zac Martin thinks some of the lines I've written are worthy of his band writing songs with such titles, but I'm still trying to determine what the crap I was thinking when I wrote these poems. Some of these older pieces are simply horrible. They're so bad I don't think I could bear to let anyone read them! I once wrote this one gawdawful waste of paper that was about how those non-profit organizations with rich spokespeople on their commercials were all part of a conspiracy to... never mind.

This, gentle readers, is the voice of me being my own worst critic. It comes forth most often when I'm writing something, shooting photographs, or interviewing a source. The latter example could be the worst, because I always think of something better I could have asked the person and when I get back to my apartment or my office at the time I have to call the source and bug them for another 10 or 20 minutes of their lives.

Thank God for the context of Whim and especially this section. Rarely do I need to get in my car and go outside of campus to go interview someone. Maybe I'm having trouble getting out of the editorial mode.

This aspect of anyone certainly has its upsides. For one, you don't let being lackadaisical slide. You've got your own standards of quality and it's well within your control to meet those standards. You know what you want and furthermore, you know how to get it. You are also your own personal highest authority. This is particularly true in my line of work, where editors actually give suggestions rather than mandate that a portion of a piece of writing or a photograph be molded a certain way.

But the downsides shine just as bright. It takes you for-freaking-ever to get a job done because you're scrutinizing every last detail. I don't even have to explain how much pressure this puts on someone who may be working under or with you, or even over you. Perhaps more importantly, you can become insecure and even lose a bit of self-esteem when things don't go your way when you could have gotten them right the first time.

So what do I do, being a self-admitted prisoner and professor of this character trait? I try to follow my own advice, and that's to not take myself too seriously when I don't have to. I get bothered when things don't go my way, like the revision of some of this older poetry, but I keep going and I learn from my mistakes.

Just a little advice I thought I'd pass on. Right now, I need to determine what I meant by women "sweating missiles and placenta."