Imposter Syndrome vs. Book 7.

Dear Reader,

As you may have noticed from how irregular my posts have been, I've been struggling to get back into daily posting. Some of this is due to life circumstances, such as my children having back to back snow days due to this biting cold weather. Some of this is due to my struggling with the feeling that I am not half as competent as I think I am on a good day. Imposter syndrome is a big thing and a lot of people struggle with it.

Right now, the only area that I feel comfortable expressing myself is with yarn. That makes working on a manuscript rather difficult. Granny squares are fairly simple and, in the grand scheme of things, very utilitarian. I struggle with writing because I was taught that it was a waste of time and told that I had no talent. (I'm not naming names of who said these things to me. As you may have observed in my anecdotes for the Artist's Way exercises I share with you, I have been keeping names and identifying qualities of the persons reserved. It is enough to say that at crucial, formative periods in my artistic life, I was taught some horrible things and for a long time believed them to be true.

It is very challenging for me to engage in things like sketching now because I struggle with the concept that my art is legitimate and valid. It is very difficult for me to write narratives that are reflections of myself due to trauma that has happened in my past surrounding things like keeping a journal. These challenges meld together and turn into the smothering mass known as imposter syndrome. And it is smothering, let me tell you. I look around at everything and second guess myself horribly. I question my competence and wonder when some 'expert' is going to step in and declare all of my faults before ruining my life.

This is making book seven particularly hard to write. Not because it is a fictionalized autobiography, though it would have been pretty cool if there was a dragon in my life when I was a kid that was kind and wise and stuff. No, I'm having a crisis of confidence as to if I can even finish this book. I'm not giving up. But I am taking a day off from working on it because I'm so muddled up that I can't think straight.