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.
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
Why do we stay in prison when there’s no lock holding us there?
How could a stranger at sunset possibly know what I had to say?
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
Midlife becomes big crisis when our self-deception stops working
Getting better at all I do is only way to fight ‘imposter syndrome’
I’m losing need to explain myself to those who misunderstand me