Blog: I’m the Imposter

Hi, hello, and welcome back to the blog that just keeps on stopping. My name is Matthew Binamira Sanders, and I have another free form rant for you to read. So get your reading glasses, cups of water, and girl dinners together for this mediocre spiel of words. Anyways, have you ever felt that you are not good enough or your work isn’t good enough? A rhetorical question yes, but it really gets you wondering about why you feel that way.

First it starts out with this overwhelming amount of confidence and motivation to do or get something done. Maybe your an artist like me, making photos or art pieces back to back non stop. Maybe getting a couple hundred likes on Insta or having your first Tik Tok video go viral. You start to feel like your bossing the game, you’re getting followers, people are connecting with you, life’s getting easier. You start to forget what it was like to struggle and you’re beginning to feel like you really got a hold of things. Then some random misadventure or mishap goes down, someone drops some negativity in your comment section or maybe your likes just aren’t where they used to be. Then the spiraling starts, and we all know what that spiraling feels like.

Now of course not everyone here is a creative, not everyone here feels like being an influencer, or digital nomad. Some, if not most people, enjoy a traditional career, which is great too. However, the feeling of being not good enough consistently runs throughout that field as well. Say, not applying for jobs because you don’t feel like you would even get a call back. (I do that all the time). Maybe you work your “worth” or stay at a job because you don’t feel like you’re worthy of anything else. Maybe you would rather have someone tell you what to do because you feel like the voice in your head, your own wants and needs, aren’t the “right” wants and needs that someone should have. (Saddening how i’m writing this like i’m talking about you all, when i’m really talking about me. Nevertheless i’m sure y’all can vibe with this too).

Imposter Syndrome - the condition of feeling anxious and not experiencing success internally, despite being high-performing in external, objective ways. This condition often results in people feeling like "a fraud" or "a phony" and doubting their abilities.

I know y’all be hearing about this, and I know for a fact all y’all have felt this before at some point in your life. If you’re like me, you’re feeling this everyday. Now, feeling like an imposter feels different for everyone of course. Some people may feel like they aren’t good enough or that they aren’t good enough for what they are already doing, even though they are exceptionally qualified in all areas to do what they do. Some people may just feel like they don’t know who they are or what they “supposed” to do. What’s really wild to me is that feeling has become more and more common throughout the past couple of decades. I mean that’s not a fact, this is all speculation of course, but i’m sure like 75% of young adults have felt this here imposter syndrome even if they didn’t know the term for it. I’m sure like 100% of the people reading this have felt it for sure or live with it everyday. Like I know my audience okay. To the artist and creatives reading this, me included, you and me both know that we go on instagram or twitter on a daily basis and compare ourselves to the other artist out there. The creatives that are making tens of thousands of dollars doing what we want to do and making things that we also make. We consistently get discouraged, unmotivated, and get put in this creative rut because of those comparisons that we put on ourselves. I mean, don’t feel bad, I feel like it’s human nature to compare things and such. Like we wouldn’t have realized how bad the new(ish) Doctor Strange was if we didn’t have the first one right. (Like why was it so bad, I love doctor strange).

Anyways, when done constructively, comparisons are great. Critiques are great. We grow from them, we find our faults, and we move onto the next. The part where the imposter gets us is when we sit there and dwell on our fault and short comings. Weird how among is lowkey a good metaphor for this, kinda wild. WHATEVER YOU DO, DONT GET CAUGHT FIXING YOUR FAULTS FOR TOO LONG, THE IMPOSTER WITH GET YOU. Real talk though, answering the question from before with somewhat of a solution, move onto the next and don’t dwell on your faults. For my creatives, it’s good to compare yourself to the Peter Mckinnons, the Youtube Stars, the Van Gohs, nothing is stopping you from doing it. However, don’t trash your stuff, do tell yourself you’re not good enough because your stuff isn’t as “good” as theirs. Lowkey, there’s this famous artist that literally just scribbles on a paper and sells that shit for hundreds, all because he’s just confident in what he does. Be confident in your creation, be confident in your work, and just make what you want to make. People like your stuff, follow you, and share your stuff because they like the thing that YOU created not because it looks like someone else’s stuff.

You’re good enough to be you and that’s all you need to be real talk.

What’s really crazy is that I want someone to tell me that this is good enough to post, but imma post this because I want to. The brain is weird and the world is weird but the one thing that stays consistent is the fact you are you and you are all you need to be. Next we’ll talk about narcissistic personality disorder.

Anywaaaaaaays, thank you for reading and making it here to the end. I appreciate you. Leave a comment below if you like and also leave a comment below if you want to be in my next dream. Peace, love and positivity y’all.

Also, I dropped another YouTube video for the first time in 8 months about this same thing! Check out the goofiness here