David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

I don’t really hate you, honest; I’m just afraid you may hurt me

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It happens more often than I like to admit. There’s an angry inner voice that seems to have a mind of its own.

“I hate everybody!” the voice hisses angrily in my head.

For years, I’ve joked that there’s a wide-ranging conspiracy to make me a misanthrope — and I fear it’s working. The joke has been my attempt to reconcile two things which can’t be reconciled:

— I choose to love others, for their benefit and my own.

— I hate so many of the people around me every day.

Those two things can’t be reconciled, so I make jokes about it. The more contact I have with humans, the more I feel like a misanthrope — and I hate feeling that way. It makes me feel so wrong inside, but something in me wants to lash out — needs to lash out — as though I’m defending myself.

And I think I finally understand why.

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Getting better at all I do is only way to fight ‘imposter syndrome’

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Nobody ever taught me how to write. Nobody taught me how to take photos. Nobody taught me how to do graphic design. Or political consulting. Or filmmaking. I’ve never been taught properly how to do any of the things I’ve spent my life doing. Because of this, I have a terrible secret.

I’m insecure about most of what I do. I feel like a fraud — and I’m scared I’ll be exposed one day.

See this simple photo of Molly sitting on my desk over the weekend? I could not have taken that photo a year ago. It looks simple — and that’s much of its charm — but it’s a very difficult photograph, at least by my standards. And unless you know a lot about photography, you wouldn’t be able to shoot it correctly, either.

If people love what I do, I beat myself up and say they just don’t realize how untalented I am. I tell myself they don’t see the work which I attempt and throw away because it’s terrible. They don’t know I’m a fraud — as a writer, photographer, filmmaker, whatever. I’m hiding it from them.

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Future reality starts in what we believe inside about who we are

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It was mid-afternoon Saturday. I was in the shower getting ready to go over to someone’s house on a social visit for the evening. The phone rang in the next room and my mind had an immediate thought.

“It’s probably her!” I thought.

I’ve had this experience over and over. When my phone rings, I think it’s her. When I hear that I have a new email, I think it’s from her. I even have the same thought — “Maybe it’s something she sent” — when there’s something unexpected in my mailbox.

This isn’t rational. I have no reason to expect to hear from her. But because something in me expects it — every single day — I can’t help believing that it’s about to come true.

For right or for wrong, I have strong images of who I am and what my future will be. What people see on the outside isn’t always what I see on the inside. Like the cat who stalks his prey believing he’s a lion, I see myself as a world conquerer.

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