From Imposter Syndrome to Reconnection: A Quiet Return to Painting

Major imposter syndrome – I’m not kidding.

And also feeling a complete disconnect from all of the creative projects I launched earlier this year. What gives?? Seriously. It's incredibly frustrating to be so motivated and inspired and wanting to take quick, repeated action because you're so seriously excited about what you're building — to then go nearly two months with an excruciating feeling that you've lost all interest in what you set out to do.

Especially when I don’t actually think that is true. The goals behind creating these things are real — creating work and content that is inspiring and authentic to me, helping others, developing foundations that have the potential to give me and my family more freedom in the future. To enable myself to have more time to be in the studio in the new city I am moving to. To spend less time doing work that doesn’t build my own career.

Then what, then? What could be causing this lack of momentum, motivation, and genuine cringeworthy feeling when I look at and read my own words?

I think it is a simple, bad case of imposter syndrome. A deep-seated feeling that I have absolutely no business sharing words, talking about my work, teaching anybody anything — a complete lack of belief in my ability to teach properly. I mean, if I think about all of that objectively, when I am in a good headspace, I do know that these sentiments simply are not true.

I wrote these words in an utter state of disconnectedness.

Fast forward a few hours and I watched the Frida Kahlo movie — one I had seen several times before. But it reminded me that all I really want (and need) to do in my life, no matter how I sustain a living around it and the other endeavours I pursue, is to paint.

I brought my brushes and the little canvases I still have here with me in Oxfordshire before moving back to Scotland, and painted while I watched — in the background — the story of an artist who painted throughout her colourful and pain-ridden life.

After that work is done, the world seems right, and everything else just fades backward to where it belongs — reminding me that all is, in fact, well, so long as I do this work.