“Survivor Guilt” (Personal Essay)
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only author/artist who is regularly afflicted with “imposter syndrome”.
You know what I’m talking about: the sense that you’re a giant fake, the professional credentials you’ve managed to accumulate during the course of your career acquired more out of pure luck than any innate talent or aptitude.
And even when the evidence is overwhelming and through supreme exertion and force of will you’ve spent decades toiling at your craft, earning stellar reviews and plaudits, creating a body of work anyone in their right mind would be thrilled with, still there’s this inescapable sense that it’s all an illusion and sooner or later you’re going to be exposed as the poser and phony you really are.
With that in mind…
This past month I devoted ten days to assembling my first authoritative (though likely not definitive) bibliography, a comprehensive roster of not only my published writing, but also my forays into other media, every format I’ve employed as a means of creative expression.
Ladies and gentlemen, the end result of that exercise is an eighteen (18) page document, much of it single-spaced, a mind-boggling list of novels, short stories, poems, essays, visual art, music and films.
I spent hours in my basement, shifting plastic bins, trying to find the ones containing contributor copies of magazines and publications long gone and barely remembered, toting armloads upstairs to my office so I could check dates, establish some kind of chronological order.
But it’s finally done, the bins restored to their former state, my office navigable once more, unimpeded by teetering stacks of ’zines and anthologies dating back to the mid-1980s.
Except that nasty ol’ imposter syndrome won’t go away, won’t be dissuaded or appeased, despite everything I’ve just told you. Only now the tone is slightly altered: okay, you got lucky, discovered the small press scene when it was still vibrant and willing to publish your crazy shit. But what have you done lately? You’ve got all these projects on the go, but when are you actually going to finish one?
Etc., etc.
Sometimes this head of mine is a real war zone, accusations flying back and forth, attacks continuing without cease long into the night. The artistic life isn’t for the thin-skinned or those in need of constant approbation. Each day you’re faced with the same dilemma: how to create something out of thin air, something new and different, original and unprecedented.
The pressure is unbelievable, the rewards few and far between.
Even if you survive in this biz as long as I have, there are feelings of guilt, inadequacy and all the self-help books and positivity-spouting gurus in the world won’t change that.
To live you must create, yet the act of creation causes you enormous pain.
You pick up a pen, knowing what it will cost you, the toll it will take.
Not out of courage, more like defiance.
You might be an imposter but you’re no pale imitation.
Determined to shine even if first you must burn.
Beautiful Desolation 
Amen to the DEFIANCE! Keep on making, brother. I will, too.
It doesn’t get any easier…but as Jim Harrison wrote in his autobiography: “My life could have been different but wasn’t”. Never were wiser words spoken. Be well, chum.
About ten years ago, I was under threat of redundancy from the job I was in. The company said that they would consider placing people into other roles within the company if there was anything available which suited candidates.
But I realised that they only had the CV which I submitted to get the job I was in. That was, of course, very focussed on just the qualities and skills the job demanded. So I put together a supplemental CV listing all the other things I’d done that the company might find useful, including a bibliography. Nowhere near as impressive as yours, Cliff (two rather specialist books and perhaps five or six magazine articles, equally specialist but in at least five cases proper professional sales that earnt me folding money), but certainly out of the run of the usual CVs that Human Resources read.
The director who was handling the redundancies, a man with a rather inflated sense of his own self-importance, harrumphed rather and sent me an e-mail saying “We’re not in the business of creating jobs for people, but I shall read your CV.” The next time I went into a meeting with said director and the HR manager, the director’s nose was definitely our of joint. My CV now revealed that I was a published author, an award-winning photographer, had worked for very senior people in Government, and mixed with Captains of Industry well above his pay grade. (The HR manager was impressed, but her hands were fairly tied.)
I got two things out of the exercise. First, I felt I now had a greater level of control over my own fate. That the company didn’t take me up on my new offer was neither here nor there; I had risen above them. (And the director stayed out of my way for the rest of my time with the company, so that was definitely a Win.) Secondly, I now had a CV that was unlike very many others, because it had stuff on page one that very few other CVs would have. When I got into my job search proper, it got me a face-to-face interview roughly once every ten days, and in less than six months I had a new job. Which as I was nearly 59 at the time was pretty good going.
Turned 60 last year and have felt redundant for decades. Your account puts the lie to the notion that there are no second acts–we can remake ourselves at any point in our lives, it’s a process of discovery that need not ever end. You have my respect, Robert, and, needless to say, my best wishes.
“You might be an imposter but you’re no pale imitation”. Hit the nail on the head there Cliff. That’s the focus. Nobody brings to the table what I am capable of bringing. Nobody! So I take my rightful place and do my job in the working/artistic/ world because it is absolutely necessary. Shine on!
Each voice is unique and no one should tell you what to say or how to say it. It’s our diversity as a society that makes us great.