At a Crossroads
Can you have imposter syndrome if you’re not even wearing the costume?
To impersonate (impost?), you at least have to be doing the thing that you feel like you’re doing so poorly you’ll be found out as someone who shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. I had therapy on Wednesday, and I was talking again (and again and again) about my struggle to open the laptop and write.
I can get myself to the gym. I can get myself to a Twilight watch party. But the dining table 3 feet away to write something of substance? I take one step there and wind up one step from the dressing room at Crossroads off Vermont. I do love my last procrastination process, but can only afford this coping mechanism a few crop tops longer.
My therapist asked when I stopped writing, and I said,
“After my assault. I was writing regularly before then, but even when I set out to write something fun and frivolous, I end up going super deep and I just couldn’t be in that space.”
“Ah. So for months you told yourself writing wasn’t a safe place and now you have a hard time doing it. Duh, that’s it.”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”
“You just need to get back into it in a way that doesn’t scare you. Starting small. Open your laptop one day and walk away. The next day open up a document, maybe write a word or two, and then just keep going like that until you’re back.”
“Huh. Okay, yeah.”
This whole time I’ve been telling myself that I had to plummet back into the deep end and wondering why I was so unwilling to jump in. However curtly my therapist put it, she reminded me that I can give myself more steps. I can choose to succeed in smaller increments instead of failing at one intimidating feat.
This is me getting my feet wet. I opened this document 10 minutes ago, and that’s all I’ll do today.
I also wrote a LinkedIn post on Gwyneth Paltrow and AI, which is a writing style that’s much easier to wrap my head around.
That’s all for now. Toodles!