I Confidenced Too Hard

When pressed, I like to say I was haphazardly homeschooled.

Meaning, there was an attempt at structure. But in a home of ten people, structure was not our strongest asset.

I learned to read somewhere in my seventh year, thanks to Hooked on Phonics. Just me, a cassette player, headphones, and a spite-fueled determination to figure out what those street signs were saying.

It worked for me.

That became a pattern. Self-taught. Self-motivated. Self-talked into things I had no business doing, until I did them, and then they were just things I did.

My dad had one piece of career advice: fake it til you make it. Say yes, figure it out later. So I did. Again and again, thrown into the deep end, I learned to swim. I got very good at getting good at things I didn’t want to do.

Which is a useful skill.

Until you realize you’ve become an expert at surviving a life you don’t actually want.

But those jobs allowed space for creativity, which kept me alive. So we’re even.

One day I looked at my job, looked at my salary, and felt something I hadn’t let myself feel before.

Not anger.

Grief.

Because the paycheck wasn’t really the point. It just happened to be the thing that exposed a much bigger story I’d been telling myself.

Somewhere along the way, I’d quietly started believing I was only worth as much as I’d allowed myself to ask for.

That’s when I stumbled into something I haven’t been able to shake.

Impostor syndrome isn’t a credentials problem. It’s not a confidence problem or an ability problem or even an identity problem.

It’s a timestamp problem.

The impostor voice finds a snapshot, a version of you from three years ago, five years ago, maybe fifteen, and says: remember her? That’s who you are.

Except she isn’t.

We are not snapshots. We’re living, breathing, constantly becoming. We fail and heal and create and change and wake up a little different than we were the day before. The impostor voice mistakes an old timestamp for a permanent identity.

It’s introducing you to someone who isn’t here anymore.

Which makes the impostor voice...

the actual impostor.

(That’s another book. It’s in my drafts, babe. I’ll write it for you one day.)

That realization changed something. I stopped waiting.

I wrote a book on a topic I had no business writing, except I was passionate about it, learning about it, and felt I had something to say. So I said it. Girl, Listen: Your Fascia Needs to Talk to You exists now.

I showed up to a book fair before my book was even published, while the ink was still drying, wearing the word author before I could internally justify it.

I booked studio time with a producer before I had proof this was worth pursuing. I walked in with a song I’d written in the trenches of striving and perfectionism, a song about escaping the lie that you have to earn rest, that you have to be everything before you’re allowed to be enough. My song comes out in July. I still don’t entirely know what I’m doing.

There are jobs I’ve applied for that made me laugh out loud. Projects that feel too big. Ideas that seem a little ridiculous.

Every single one felt wildly premature.

But I don’t think growth happens after we finally feel ready.

I think readiness catches up to courage.

So when the impostor voice asks, who do you think you are?

I have an answer.

Someone newer than you’re giving me credit for.

You can’t catch me.

You know those old 3D movies before you put the glasses on? Everything looked doubled. Slightly out of alignment. Like there were two or three versions of the same person, none of them quite lining up.

That’s what becoming has felt like.

Like I could always see her. The version of me I thought was just out of reach. Not someone different. Just slightly ahead.

Lately, it feels like the images are lining up.

I wear the name first. Then I grow into it.

Author. Musician. Someone who isn’t apologizing for taking up space.

Not because I’m pretending. Because it turns out you don’t wait to feel ready, or worthy, or like the identity actually belongs to you. You just... become it. And then one day it fits.

I’m done waiting to become the version of me I thought I had to earn. She wasn’t at the finish line.

She was here the whole time, waiting for me to stop introducing myself by an expired timestamp.

I’m done faking it until I make it. I’m just... making it. Making the things. Doing the things. Showing up before I feel entirely justified.

And to the impostor voice, borrowing from a girl in a labyrinth facing down a goblin king:

You have no power over me.

Well.

I confidenced too hard.

Guess we’ll see what happens.