Imposter

I have spent years crippled by imposter sydrome which has been one of the biggest causes of my creative blockages. It's not the only one, which makes navigating these blockages more complicated because it hasn't felt as straightforward as "fake it til you make it". I am always held back by my internal dialogue of negative thoughts, here are some examples -

"Someone has already done that."

"Why would they choose you?"

"You don't know enough."

"You're too inconsistent to do that."

"Why would anyone be interested in you?"

These thoughts went on and on for years and have derailed every attempt at having creative outlets. For a long time I thought I was too lazy to be creative, but, if you put a structured list of things to do in front of me I am going to complete it with perfection, ease and probably faster than most. It took a lot of self reflection to realise that I had no confidence in myself or the experience I could share with the world. I did well in school, I achieve great results in exams and I have excelled in all of the courses I have taken, so, my ability and intelligence was never something I doubted. My self doubt was much deeper than that. The doubt came from believing that nobody would want to 'see' me or hear me, that anything creative that I produced didn't hold any value to anyone else. I would start creative projects and feel a sense of achievement and pride, but, that would quickly fizzle out and I'd fall back into the spiralling self doubt and lose all motivation. I'm talking about this Imposter Syndrome in a past tense, as if I'm not still crippled by it. I'm writing as if I didn't spend the last few months procrastinating about writing this blog. It's still there, but I am aware of it, and I hope that by fulfilling this project that I will start to shift the layers of lies that I have told myself. I am going to surrender to my inconsistent nature, embrace it and hopefully the acceptance of my inconsistancy will preserve some of my energy for creative projects, like this one.