I think that many writers and musicians struggle with something called imposter syndrome. It’s an actual thing coined by psychologists in the ‘70s: an inability to internalize accomplishments. Basically, it feels like you aren’t really that great and that you haven’t done anything of noteworthy praise even if you have. All the hard work you’ve done is just the hard work you’ve done–you feel you should have worked harder.
I haven’t won any medals for my art, nor published in any famous literary magazines. I haven’t made a complete record or been signed to a label. Many of us haven’t. But I have made tiny accomplishments, and like many, I continue to practice most every day on making my writing and/or music more palatable to me and other people. I continue to send work out, getting published or being asked to play sets here and there, chipping away, realizing full well that a lot of times I’m published or asked to play out because of who I know or being in the right place at the right time. It’s a small world.
Regardless, there’s this deep seated fear when I’m around other people who are also artists. What if they find out about me? What if they find out I’m not really real? That I’m a fraud or a fake and that I can’t really write and I suck at music and I’m just pretending I know what I’m doing? What if they listen to my songs and cringe? What if they read my non-fiction stories and go, “Poor thing, deluding herself that she can write.”
When all else fails, resort to LOLcats
Every time I start talking with a new musician or writer and we get to the point where we want to collaborate or exchange work, I run through my list of creations and start backpedaling in my head. Maybe next time, I think. When I’m better. I can send them something then.
Practice has taught me to share anyways, to keep creating and honing and articulating in spite of the very real sensation that I’m not really real and any moment the art police are going to come in and arrest me for taking up space inside their museum of only the best and most pertinent creations. It’s an uphill battle fought with a too-flimsy stick on terrain that is slightly moist and covered with slippery rocks. Below me, at the bottom of the hill I climb every day I hone my craft are the creations I’ve sacrificed along the way.
Like a collection of disabled dolls with their limbs sewn on wrong, my prior creations make up a landfill of misfits. Each time I’ve finished something, I move on to the next thing, try to make the next thing better than the previous thing in an endless process of replacing an older creation with an upgraded version and discarding the previous experiment after seeing its glitches.
Above me is the holy beacon of recognition, thought to be obtained through self-awareness. It is tinged with the chance of social status, validation, an endlessly tantalizing carrot on the stick pulling me forward in spite of the years of hard work ahead (most of the people I know who are finally getting published to accolades are now in their forties).
Sucking at your art is relative. It depends on who you talk to, who you compare yourself to. If I say I suck because I only lifted 42 times on one arm with a 16kg bell and one of my readers says he can’t even lift one of those bells a portion of that number of times (which happened the other day, thanks Mike!) I pause for a second and go wow, my reality is entirely based on proximity and perception.
Of course, the whole thing unravels and I’m sloshing down a slippery slope straight into my pile of misfit creations just as soon as someone near me does better or ignores me or gives me some harsh and needed feedback. Then everything I’ve done up until that point simply doesn’t count.
It’s so easy to forget what I’ve done, to wish for more. To be impatient with myself. To feel like a camper in my own body. Sometimes I read my writing and wonder who wrote it. Sometimes I wonder if writing being a reward in itself is enough, if making music for music’s sake is going to continue to fulfill me the rest of my life, if it’s OK if I never “make it.“
It is and it isn’t. Like Pinocchio, I want to be real; like Christopher McCandless, I find that happiness is often only real when shared.
awesome post …have been here a time or two …lol
Thanks Tim!
Hey! I really relate to what you have shared here – thank you!
I think sometimes that artists are their own harshest critics. Sometimes I look at something I made a year or two ago (that hasn’t sold) and find fault with it (coulda, shoulda done this or that) and take it apart to recycle what I can from it. But, today someone spent a couple hundred bucks to buy two lamps that I’d given up on. She liked those two more than any of the other 200 items I have for sale!
I always say that I make what I want regardless of whether anyone likes it or not, but I DO feel better when I check my email and discover a sale.
Or, when the owner of a gallery I like told me she wanted to drive 150 miles to see my work and studio (garage!). And took a truckload back with her.
Or, when someone I’d never heard of posted this on their blog:
http://fishandbicycles.com/2012/05/10/upcycling-michael-smiths-destructive-testing.
So, yeah, I do make only what I want to, but it is so much sweeter to get positive feedback!
Mike
Which goes to show, even the internet is a smaller world than we realize.
“Which goes to show, even the internet is a smaller world than we realize.”
Yeah, and I only need to connect with the couple percent that might like my work!
Mike
I forgot to tell you that this comment was great! Thank you for sharing, yet again.
Narcissism cures most of that.
The funny thing is I feel that way about daily life, (except for the fear part, I don’t think I’d care if people found out I wasn’t a real person because then, y’know, I’d know.) and when it comes to art and writing and all that, it’s the only time I feel connected to reality sometimes.
I create therefore I am? When I can hold/look/read something physical, tangible I can quantify my existence.
“This isn’t something I just dreamed, I made it.” And when I don’t like it, it makes it more real. Can you imagine how surreal life would be if everything happened the way you wanted it to? Even our dreams don’t happen that way.
Sometimes I look at my years of crappy sketchpads just to remember that I did things, that I had thoughts and drives and feelings. And sometimes I try to recreate them by improving on old designs. It’s like a bond between now-you and past-you.
I don’t know about you, but even though I remember my youth, I understand the decisions I made, and I value the experiences I gained, I have no real connection to past-me. It’s a lifetime ago. A hazy dream. A book I read that I vaguely remember the plot to. Connecting to things I’ve done renews my understanding of myself.
I’m an impostor in a world of real people who have hopes and dreams and ambitions. I just kind of sit here and watch it all go by, and sometimes, I make stuff. That stuff is me. No one else could make the things I make, because they are mine.
Do you ever feel that way? I’m pretty possessive, but I never feel like I own anything that I don’t make.
I think the tattoos you got are pretty neat because they’re like a living representation of something I drew. Someday I’d love to have a room or library or something that was just filled with everything I’ve done in my life.
Maybe it’s because I don’t really care about what other people do or achieve that I don’t really feel lacking. I feel the worst when I try to measure myself against what I think/feel I can do. Sometimes having an ego is a pain. I’m always thinking “I could do better, I could do more”
Do you read things that other people write and feel lacking because you didn’t write it? Or because you don’t think your writings measure up?
Was there a time that you thought what you did was good enough, or better than anyone else could do? I don’t think I’ve ever felt that myself, since the reason I started drawing was because everyone around me could draw and I couldn’t. Maybe it would help to consider why you started in the first place.
I just keep doing things that I want to do because I know eventually I’ll be better than everyone else at doing what I want, or die trying, in which case, I won’t care.
Does it matter more where your art goes, or that you’ve done it at all? For me it’s the latter. I know a lot of people can’t feel successful until they’ve met some certain goal of measurement; Nobel prize, published by a major company, making a lot of money etc.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with feeling like an impostor sometimes, but I’m always interested to know why we feel the ways we do.
I really like your conception of art to show you were here. I think I do that a lot too, but never really put the words into it. I feel like your comment deserves another read and rumination (as always) ms. deep profound sibling.
If I’m deep and profound, it’s just a side effect. I certainly don’t aim for it!
Trouble with being a Bean. You always make me think too much.
It’s Enough. Or is It? | Thestifledartist's Blog