Imposter Syndrome is Robbing the F*ck Out of Us All
Are you charging less than you should like a chump???
Aug 1, 2023
Are you charging less than you should like a chump???
Have you ever felt like the whole wide world would never be big enough for you? You’re so hungry for it, you eat up every square inch you can find: streets, monuments, wine bars, neighborhoods. The way the dandelion grows differently, over here. The way the people take just a little bit longer to greet you when you walk into a restaurant. You feel like you’re staring at an alternate version of yourself, had you been born French, as you
We hear it all the time: FIND MEANING IN YOUR LIFE, SHITHEAD. (I’m a huge fan of elegance.) It’s become the advice du jour. The magical solution to our woes. The on-call prescription for disappointment with life. In a sense, the search for meaning has become a religion of its own. We worship its ideals and bow at its implications. We’re kept awake at night, hoping to form a relationship with meaning. We want to feel its presence so deeply in
Can we talk about friends for a minute? <Cue group groan.> Why is that? When did friendship become A VERY HARD THING? I’m not talking about your ride-or-dies—you know who they are—I’m talking about the very real problem of: (a) Being an adult;(b) And making friends;(c) Who kind of suck;(d) And aren’t supportive. How did we get stuck with these hambonis? Case in point: a woman emailed me the other day about “proving yourself to non-believers.” And I thought: who
In my twenties I hated routine—but that’s because I confused it for stagnancy. Anything that whiffed of repetition was automatically on my shit list: schedules, affirmations, habits, recurring obligations, things that put a vise on my freedom. I never wanted to live feeling beholden to a calendar, letting it rule my days more than I did. To me, routines were for the weak: people who weren’t disciplined enough to get it done without force. When I’d get on interviews and
You know what the biggest cause of burn out is? BEING SMART. There, I said it! If you are smart, and you are driven, and you have actual ambitions beyond “beat Princess Beefcurtains in the next level of Fortnite” then you are likely going to suffer from a whole RAGING RIVER of problems that normal people do not have. One of those problems is overthinking something you said to the neighbor three years ago. ?♀️ And another is feeling like
There’s terrible advice, and then there’s the type of advice that makes you want to fake your death and ride bareback on a donkey through Cleveland. Until today, I thought that the Cosmo advice to “apply a little Ben Gay to his privates for an unexpected treat” was that kind of advice. (Do not try that at home, or in any grocery store parking lots, ever.) Turns out, though, there is at least ONE ARTICLE doling out even more questionable
Well, that’s certainly a crowbar to the face, isn’t it? It’s okay to be done with good things. I’ve been obsessed with this idea lately: that maybe good situations can keep you just as trapped as bad situations, sometimes. (If you’ve ever had an entire plate of cheese fries in front of you, you get where I’m going.) How many things are you holding onto just because it would be a shame to give them up? Because you invested the
Oh, look! I made it to 2022 without committing suicide. That is a pretty terrible thing to say, but if you know me, then you also know I am a pretty terrible person—at least, when it comes to: (a) Dealing with most people; (b) Pot roasts; and (c) Matching my underwear to my bra. (Though bonus points for really wanting to be that person. Do you know how many times I’ve bought matching sets, only to completely and totally rebel
My almost-mother-in-law gets really fucking nervous when I travel—especially when I bomb off to South America for a month by myself to drink ALL THE WINE and celebrate ALL THE BOOK DEALS. But she doesn’t get worried in the typical way a mother might; not the way my own mother would have been worried, which would have sounded something like: “Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph, Ashley, you think they won’t kidnap you and rape you and leave you for dead?