According to WebMD, “Imposter syndrome is when you doubt your own skills and successes. You feel you’re not as talented or worthy as others believe, and you’re scared that one day, people will realize that.”

I have never considered myself a writer.  In college I decided to get an English Minor to go along with my Electrical Engineering degree (I think that makes me a unicorn) because I love to read.  Unfortunately, being an English Minor involves more than reading. After blowing through a bunch of Literature classes, and one on Shakespeare, I was left with the one I dreaded most.  Advanced Composition.  Not only was it writing, but it was like Advanced Writing, way more advanced than the schlock I had produced so far.  My final quarter there were two sessions that fit into my schedule, and they were both full.  I crashed them both, played the “graduating senior” card, got into both, and picked the one that seemed to be the best fit.  The course was all about expository essays, reading them and, of course, writing them.  

It’s not as if I had managed to make it to the cusp of a college degree without writing.  All of the English classes I had taken so far required me to write multiple essays, and I had successfully navigated all of them, with many people praising my writing along the way. But this was different.  This was an upper-division writing class.  I had no business being there.  

The first essay I wrote was titled “Chasing Tigers and Golden Bears.” It was about my golf game, or lack thereof.  My roommate read it, said it was great and that I should be a writer.  Of course I didn’t believe him.  He was another Engineering Student, what did he know about writing? Plus he had golfed with me, so he know everything I had written was accurate.  A couple weeks later the professor handed our papers back, but first he wanted to read one aloud as an example of what he was looking for.  It was titled “Chasing Tigers and Golden Bears.” My initial reaction was amazement that someone else had used the same title as me, followed by the realization that he was reading my essay.  I got an A in that class and during the final the professor asked me to email him a copy of that paper for him to use for future classes.

Twenty five years, two blogs (one abandoned and deleted without a trace, the other updated so infrequently that I have to re-learn how to share from the WordPress app to social media every time I write something), and hundreds of ideas that seemed brilliant, possessed my thoughts but never made it on to paper, and a rare few that did later, I still don’t feel like a writer.

Social media memes exist to entertain and inform, and when you have friends who are writers and you follow them on social media you see a lot of memes about writers and the writing process.  The most prevalent theme seems to be self doubt.  Knowing that there are other writers out there wrestling with these same demons is not reassuring at all. I can see their talent, but nothing from myself.

Now, here I am, part of this Mint In Box consortium. We have writers, graphic artists and designers.  All of us try to work together to help everyone produce art. This should be just the uplifting experience I need. Yet, these creatives definitely have me feeling like an imposter.  I don’t belong here.  At best I’m creatively sarcastic.  I see what these people produce and wonder why they ever invited me to join them.  They say when you’re being chased by a bear you don’t need to be faster than the bear, you just need to be faster than the slowest person in your group.  I think they’re keeping me around for bear, or tiger, food.