Imposter Syndrome

I can't even believe I am saying this out loud. To be honest, at this point, I am banking on the fact that this is a new blog on a new-ish website and there probably aren't many people reading this yet. So, if I am wrong and I've drawn a hungry crowd for tea time with my diary-- then cheers!

According to an article published by the Harvard Business Review, Imposter Syndrom is loosely defined as: doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud. It disproportionately affects high-achieving people, who find it difficult to accept their accomplishments. Many question whether they’re deserving of accolades.

Social media is a brilliant, beautiful, ugly, deceitful, and exquisitely dreadful thing. It is a wonderfully helpful tool in business, but the interwoven personal consequences seem to be inescapable. I can share an image on the web, and instantly have important dialogue with hundreds of artists and/or clients around the world. I can also log in with one eye open, still in my pajamas, and be hit with 10,000 reasons why I am not good enough, all by breakfast.

I had read about it, heard about it, but avoided it entirely-- until the one year anniversary of my business.

Suddenly none of my images were good enough.

'Why do people choose me? Why do people pay me? My talents are not that of X, or Y, or Z.'

I was proud enough to start a business, I was confident enough to invest in myself, I was sure enough to ask others to come along on this ride with me. But now I struggled to edit a single session or make a single copy without tearing myself apart.

I think that @eliciadonze describes it best:

"People hate their own art because it looks like they made it. They think that if they get better, it will stop looking like they made it- a better person made it. But there is no level of skill beyond which you stop being you. You hate the most valuable thing about your art."

I am me. And so I keep trying.

I know this will pass, and if I am being fair to myself, I have to assume that it will return in waves, coming and going , for the rest of my career, for the rest of my life. No pressure.

Thank you for believing in me, and for choosing me, and breathing life into my fears.

You give me life.