Imposter Syndrome, Existential Dread & Comparison
I feel lost quite a lot. I feel not good enough quite a lot, and the funny thing is I am both these things. Im also twenty so in theory I should be lost and bad at things. But this overwhelming existential dread can leave me somewhat paralysed for hours or days at a time. Questions like the obvious, who am I? What will I do for a career? Will I be successful? Am I smart? Am I capable? And why hasn't it clicked yet? Flood my body. Momentarily though, I'm not living in dread but when I think about a career, dread is just the feeling that is most present, with just a tiny drop of excitement lingering underneath. I feel the need to be good at things instantly, but that is not fair to a twenty-something-year-old brain. Yet here I find myself lost and overwhelmed and all I'm thinking about is why I feel this insatiable, visceral desire to have a thriving successful career at the ripe age of twenty.
I wish there were a simple answer, and there almost is I guess. Influence from others. I've spent the past hour on my phone ‘doom-scrolling’ through all the apps. I've seen a girl with a small pottery business, someone just bought a studio to sew in, my friend released a poetry collection, the VICE writer I’m obsessed with has published another great article, my cousin's small business is thriving, my friend is passionate, and I am watching from my bed, doing nothing. I am wishing that the endless list of hobbies I have dabbled in such as: poetry, sewing, writing, music, cooking, script writing, pottery, jewellery making, crocheting, knitting, painting and photography (just to name a few) haven't thrown me an instant start to a successful business overnight.
It's the dreaded imposter syndrome which I think hits every 20-something-year-old, has hit me again quite violently this month and I find myself completely and utterly lost and passion-less. No, I don't want to read, write, sing, dance, create, learn, paint, or listen. I don't want to do any of the things that make me happy, and it's a double-edged sword because to be happy I need to be creative and create, but the idea of creating anything right now is the last thing on my never-ending to-do list.
I've decided while working my casual hospo job that I think I would like to write forever. As a career, as a hobby, as something just for me, I'm not sure yet. I think honestly I just really really love talking, and if I'm writing it's really just talking on paper. I think I would like to spend my days interviewing people, learning, reading, teaching and learning some more, but the writing process as beautiful as it is, always seems to lead me to the same inevitable, overwhelming imposter syndrome.
I tend to always fall into this same familiar hole and I notice the immense sense of absence and realise that I am very much insignificant. No thoughts of mine haven’t already been thunk by those around me or before me. Originality seems to barely exist anymore, and everyone is dying to be original. But I find that the gap between being original and desperately trying to not be like everyone else is seeming to overlap now. So I could write a million essays on the things that inspire me and follow my inquisitive nature, but somehow still after the 13th re-read in the editing process, I will realise time and time again that the words I have strung together have already been tied together by a different writer, maybe completely different, but the core is the same. And what makes the words I type up so important that someone who doesn't even know me will read them? So if I have nothing of me to offer, I am stuck, in my hole of nothingness, and I worry most days that I won't be able to climb out.
It's incredibly hypocritical, and I think if we all listened to the advice we tell others and nurture ourselves the way we nurture our friends and family this dread might not feel so heavy. I tell my little brother to enjoy being young and enjoy his lack of responsibilities and his freedom, but I am incredibly lucky and privileged to have all of these luxuries as well. The overwhelming amount of comparison we overload our brains with every spare second of every day is the core reason we feel the need to overwork, overproduce, over-consume, overachieve and over-everything.
There's this quote by Suzanne Rivecca in her novel ‘Ugly, Bitter and true’ that has stuck with me for years.
“The San Francisco therapist kept telling me I shouldn’t be terrified of creative experimentation.
“I don’t know what’s going to come out of me,” I told her. “It has to be perfect. It has to be irreproachable in every way.”
“Why?” she said.
“To make up for it,” I said. “To make up for the fact that it’s me.”
― Suzanne Rivecca
It sums up I think what I've been trying to say throughout this whole essay in 6 lines. It's the immeasurable feeling of having to be irreproachable and perfect with everything you produce. It's unobtainable, and too much pressure for anyone.
I have decided today while writing this essay that I would like to live slowly, and live happily. A very broad statement I know, but what I really mean is, only doing things that bring you joy. I know this isn't a very original thought and maybe we all try to live by this, but I want to do it as a more conscious practice. In my silly little precious life that means writing more, having more confidence in myself, giving myself room for mistakes and learning from them and enjoying the entire tedious, incredible, hard, process of figuring out what it is exactly that brings me joy. The point of this essay, which I think might belong in the glorified journal entry category rather than an essay, is to remember that you are never truly alone with these thoughts, and every 20 year old at some point is or has been pacing up and down thinking and feeling all of the thoughts that may be consuming you.