My Tent on The Beach

Here in the biz (of academia), we talk a lot about Imposter Syndrome.  I don’t think it’s inherently sociological; all neurotic people have one form of this or another and, let’s face it, academia is the meeting place for everyone with some form of “mental quirk.”  Imposter Syndrome is the looming feeling that you are not “enough” of what you need to be where you are and will eventually be “found out” by those who surround you and who you’ve been tricking all this time.

I have this. In many facets of my life (mostly because I’ve followed what may be an “unconventional” path towards everything I’ve ever done…I am not a trained teacher, musician, or counselor and I “practice” all with legitimate versions of all of these on a daily basis). Today I met with the music director at Loyola to discuss the 3 weddings I’m singing on Saturday and I’m thinking to myself, “Why do people let me do this?  This is crazy. Don’t they know that I should not be allowed to go anywhere near this music?”  I had to physically restrain myself from suggesting that maybe he should reconsider his thinking here.  I’m just a girl who’s tripping (literally…not in the peaceful sense) into all of these areas in which I really have no business.  At least, so I think.

What I wonder is if this ever goes away.  I’m a high achiever; I’ve never felt that I deserved or actually earned any of it.  My history is a smattering of lucky timing and, frankly, intervention on some level that I don’t even understand.  I have no way to account for how I got to where I am. And I perpetually feel like my greatest accomplishments are rolling with the punches so well or talking my way so convincingly into the little shadowy corners of life that so intrigue me, that I’m fooling people who should know.  I live in fear that one of these days someone is going to stop and ask me these questions: “What are you doing here?  How did you get here.  Who let you in?”

Ugh.  I feel nauseous just thinking about it.  And yet it might be a relief.  Anybody have a cure for this…well, except for dangling it on my public web page and tempting the universe to go ahead and find me someone who will ask me these questions (that I think I deserve…) to see if it actually kills me?

I bet it won’t.  And that just seems like I’ve won again…by employing my crazy scheme. And I’ll go on teaching people things, with the endorsement of people who seem to know, and singing things, and giving my opinion about things I know nothing.  And I’ll worry about it. And wait for the day when someone calls me on it.

And then, of course, I’ll take it personally…

School work has become not a little thrill.  In fact, to suggest the word “thrill” should go anywhere near this PhD process seems sacreligious.  But nonetheless, the time has come that I just start hunkering down and do this thing.

Thus, I have.  But not without reward.  Tonight as I sat down, notes in front of me, trying to drum up a train of thought about how idiocultures are developed within existing social structures and the effects of said structures (I KNOW…this is my life, people.  Not pretty), I promised myself that after a couple hours (literally 2), I would allow myself the luxury of a treat: fix my blog.  Because, really, the fact that the pictures were not mine was seriously bothersome, especially because I kept getting a lot of compliments on them and, well, that was making me jealous.

There begins my sojourn into the fun world of CSS.  Two hours later, I emerge triumphant and I feel like a million bucks. Veni, Vidi, Vici. (That’s Latin for “Take THAT you sucka pictures.” Just to recap in case you haven’t been following: I managed to get two pictures up in two hours.  And I couldn’t be happier.  In fact, I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that the Sunset at the Arno adorns my homepage.

In the midst of this compulsive panic, though, I did pause to reflect.  This may sound ridiculous but: I think we don’t celebrate enough.  Like, really expend energy to pat ourselves (or others) on the back for jobs well done.  We get judgey (PhD word, guys, keep up) about what constitutes a “success” and we’ve driven that standard so high that we really spend a huge amount of time chasing things but rarely taking stock in what makes us happy and what we’ve accomplished in getting there.

Am I a big fat nerd because I’m totally thrilled that I “won” the battle? Yes.  Unequivocally, yes.  But I’m willing to accept that for this feeling of a little weight off my shoulders and a sense that I mulled through something a figured it out.  And yay for me.

Enjoy the sunset.  I know I will.

P.S.–In case you were wondering…those OUT OF CONTROL enormo TAGS are next on the list.  That’s just ridiculous…

UPDATE: Tags fixed…for now.

One of the biggest struggles for me this summer has been contending with the notion of delayed gratification, satisfaction, relief, any other kind of “good” feeling you can think of.  This has plagued me in random facets of my life for awhile but never all at once.  This PhD is the ultimate in delay…accomplishment always lies somewhere in the not-too-distant future.  But it also seems to be trickily elusive; like the carrot tied to the horse’s head that dangles in front of it’s nose, just always out of reach, the end seems to move farther away proportionate to any kind of strides I make to get there.  This PhD is really about tricking the carrot.

For this past year, the delay was waiting to move from Crummy, Dark, Weird Apartment #2 into a place that I knew would work as a true, comfortable home base, a facet of life I’ve been without for 4 years really.  A lot of energy was spent actively waiting for that to come down.  Now that the wait is over, the relief is almost unimaginable.  But it was intense in the month of June, which happened to coincide with several of my friends heading out of reach, some permanently and some “just for the time being.”  The delay with the friends was (and still is) that my everyday life qualitatively changed.  I had to temporarily imagine my life working differently and unexpectedly and in ways completely out of my control if I still wanted them to be a part of it. It felt uncomfortable and tenuous.

I guess there’s a lot of ways to approach this.  Some might tell me I needed to adjust my mind-set: “Why wait for others when you can take the reins yourself, ” they’d say.  My response to those is that when you take the reins there, you’d better be prepared for loneliness because you’ll be the only one present to you.  Other people just become part of the decoration of your life; people in picture frames on your walls.  My question is why they’re not sitting on your couch.  Others might say that I need to loosen my grip a little.  This is probably true to some degree, but do I really want to allow “slack” with people who possess the power to turn my world?  Do I become, then, the “slacker”? I’m not comfortable with that, either.

As this month is winding down and headed back toward some kind of normalcy, with people back where they “should” be and life snapping to some kind of new but comfortable shape, I’m realizing that the lessons of delay that I take away from this June and others like it reveal themselves immediately. I’ve learned that a little missing, a little wanting is good; too much is toxic and not enough is apathetic.  Time always passes.  But forever wanting can wreck you in a very unobtrusive, quiet way; a mantle of that kind of unique discomfort can really weigh heavily.

So, I guess my lesson of delay is really this: The quality of the days in which you get what you’ve been wanting will be determined by the quality of the days you’ve spent without having.

Appreciation will usually be the end result if we’ve played it right.  But that’s my lesson.  You may have to find your own.