My Own Worst Enemy

I have always loved writing. Though ever since college, every time I sit down to write I feel like I need to always be producing something of great importance and quality. I miss the days when I could sit in my room and fill a whole journal with poems and stories and didn't care whether or not they were any "good." Writing was purely cathartic. But then I started writing for grades in school and it became more serious...now I do it professionally and it's definitely serious. I have trouble sitting down and writing for fun. It's not that I don't want to. Sometimes I feel like I have a story, poem or idea just bursting inside of me and I sit down full of energy to write it but become easily deflated because I keep revising it before I'm even finished with the first sentence. I attended a short writing class recently where someone talked about how tricky it is to do real "stream of consciousness" writing because you are literally trying to out-write the inner editor inside of you. I'm a perfectionist by nature and an editor by profession so that's not easy. Blogging has helped me a bit because I feel like my thoughts don't have to be perfect, but that doesn't mean I can't hear the inner critic inside me...I just ignore her a little more. I yearn to write more freely just to keep my creativity going. I just have to figure out a way to write faster than I can think.