Inner voices
The self help industry is very keen on having us monitor our inner voices. We are supposed to replace our silent loops of discouragement and criticism with messages that are uplifting and encouraging.
Since I have taken lately to waking up at 4.30 every morning (and lying there not just half-awake, but wide awake with big white blinking eyes in the darkness like a Simpsons character) I am becoming keenly aware of something about my own inner voice.
Not only is it critical to the point of being downright nasty and sarcastic, it also deals primarily in catch phrases from the late eighties. This is particularly odd since these aren’t expressions the rest of my brain uses at all.
For example, when I’m lying there feeling sorry for myself and wondering if there is anyone in the whole universe with a workload as heavy as mine, it rolls its eyes and tells me to deal with it. When I am wondering if I should just get dressed and find a way break into my office it tells me to get a grip (and sometimes also a life).
What really annoys me is when I’m wondering, if I did go to work at 4.30 in the morning, if I could finish all the rest of my marking in one day and it says, Yeah? You and whose army? I didn’t understand this expression in the late eighties and I don’t understand it now. There are so few things I want to do that an army could help me with even slightly (unless, in this instance, the soldiers also happened to be firm but fair markers with degrees in sociology. That would be good.)
I fear my inner voice is stupid as well as critical and dated in its approach, but when I try to monitor it I generally get told either to chill out or to dream on.
