"The dreamy-eyed perfectionist", an open letter by Premanition
Photo credit: Karyssa Leigh
There are some days where I wake up and wonder when they’ll find me. By “they” I mean the imposter police. I have somehow fooled everyone into taking me seriously and there are days where that catches up with me.
I have heard that this is called imposter’s syndrome, or the imposter phenomenon, where a person who achieves any type of success believes that they are an imposter. It’s basically “fake it ‘till you make it” to the extreme, where you finally “make it” and start to question your legitimacy.
When I was a kid, all I did was craft stories and live in a fantasy world. As soon as I learned how to write, I started scribing my own tales, macabre tales mostly (I mean the album is called Dark Ages, so we’re staying on theme). I loved storytelling for as long as I can remember, and each artistic trait I picked up throughout my life was a way to externalize the stories I tell. Art and music became not just a way to express my emotions, but some sort of cosmic soul-telescope that I could invite others to look through.
With all this magic, came another feeling as I became more serious about music and art. There came this feeling that I wasn’t truly an artist, even if I made music and wrote songs. Even if I won competitions or released albums or performed live. All I did was question myself, to the point of holding myself back for several years. An accumulation of well-deserved kick-in-the-pants talks from my mother eventually pushed me over the edge, and I decided that my imposter feelings didn’t really matter.
It’s something I carry with me, not just in music. I’m an electrical engineer as well, and I felt the same imposter feeling in my design work. It felt as though I was an artist masquerading as somebody in the sciences and people would soon find out I don’t belong there. I felt too artsy for science and again felt too sciency for the arts. It was and still is a conundrum, feeling like some sort of misfit that doesn’t quite fit anywhere.
Over the years I realized that this alienation was coming from within me (not to say that everyone in the external world will welcome you into a space), but a large fraction of the unwelcome was from me! The perfectionist in me is a mean one, and she bites hard.
The perfectionist in me hates failure and sets a bar so high that nothing will ever measure up. I used to hate her, because of her blunt nature and intensity. I have now come to understand that her presence was constructed from both my fear and passion. She was born from an anxious girl who wanted to reach the stars, a feat that cannot be accomplished by the weak of heart. So I learned to accept her, not to deny or erase, because the perfectionist is still a part of me. The perfectionist is why I spend hundreds of hours on my craft, trying to make the best songs I can that will connect and entertain others. It’s why I could pick up videography in a span of three weeks and film a music video that looks pretty damn good. Yes, she’s never satisfied, but I understand now that it’s a part of human nature to never truly be satisfied, and the answer for me is to just keep going despite that. I disarm the perfectionist with fun and wonder. She gets her run of the show, but then she takes a back seat so that I can enjoy myself amidst “the grind”.
I am a perfectionist with an overly critical self view. I am also a dreamer that has a mission to carry out. Accepting the negative feelings within me was the key to facing them, not by glorifying them or defining myself with them, but by understanding the different facets of me. Understanding why the negative is there, helped me to work with it. I am a huge proponent of “searching within”, and believe that once you discover the world within you, you can begin to navigate the one outside a little better. One day at a time.
For now, I will tinker away at my cosmic soul-telescope, regardless of whether I am an artist or an engineer or just an anxious kid, because I have a whole universe to share with you and we have a long exciting journey ahead of us.