Everyone's a critic

Some thoughts on my book birthday

It’s the one year anniversary of my book’s publication. The cover of Finding Joy is graced by this painting of instruments. The artist, my cousin Joy, is no longer with us to see her work displayed in this way, so I celebrate our combined artistic efforts in her stead. It’s our book birthday according to the writing corner of instagram. And birthday = party…right?

Joy Elizabeth Kim, “Band Instruments”

I’ve been to some great parties in my time — recently I joined Little Bird creator and director Jennifer Podemski on a dance floor in Ottawa of all places (I’ll be riding that claim to fame for at least another month). And then there was that party when I took a selfie with Brooklyn 99’s Doug Judy. Big personal win!

But I’ve figured out the hard way that parties don’t act as counterweights to the heaviness of critique — especially for those creative and intellectual pieces that we’ve poured our hearts into. I spent the weekend reshaping a grad student’s paper so that they could meet their committee’s critiques wearing a little more armour. Because that’s what it takes sometimes. A full on helmet and breastplate to protect the head and heart from the unflinching eye and harsh words of the critic.

I’ve found that a key to survival is the determination of whose critique actually counts. In academic writing it’s “peer review.” An imperfect process for sure, but we do need a vetting of ideas for what is being put out into the world as research. As critical thought. For those ideas, and perhaps all the more for the artistic and experimental, we need another pair of eyes. An editor. A trusted second reader who might be a best friend. A mother. A sister.

What we don’t need (but many of us find ourselves turning to and then feel deeply affected by) is the incessant criticism of social media. Think pieces abound concerning the short-lived dopamine hits from social media likes. The impersonal public who feel freedom in their anonymity. The launching at a stranger that we may have been on the receiving end of…or the other way around.

How to interrupt the inner critic when external forces present social criticism as the way?

Finding himself obsessed with bad amazon reviews, in an interview with Ira Glass on This American Life author Michael Schulman says,

I mean, the way the world is now, there's just constant feedback about everything. When you take an Uber, you're asked to rate the Uber driver. We're just constantly leaving stars for things and leaving customer reviews. There's Yelp. Everyone is constantly assessing everything.

Everyone’s a critic.

But an important takeaway from Schulman’s experience is to choose carefully whose opinion gets to count in the register of reviews we keep track of. So, I’m going to try something counter cultural. I’m going to blow out these candles on my book birthday, and put an extra one on the proverbial cake in celebration of Joy.

---

Thanks for reading Good Enough! If you liked this post, please hit the heart button so more people can discover it.