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The Quiet Struggle of Feeling Like a Fraud
I felt like one writing this.
Emily Austen once wrote, “I wonder if anyone really identifies as the adult they’ve morphed into.”
She was referring to this strange transition in life, where you still feel like the same person, yet realize you’ve reached another category which feels entirely separate. You may be a parent, an employee, a manager, or any label you can conjure. But some part of you still feels like that same child you were many years prior.
Which is why it can be hard to accept this new identity, or believe that you fit the criteria with such distinctions.
Famed author, Neil Gaiman, described this at length after being in a room full of accomplished artists, scientists, and “discoverers of things”. And despite his enormous publishing career, which led to hit movies, he still felt he didn’t belong.
Finally, he described meeting with an elderly gentleman in the back, who was kind, polite, and very unassuming. Neil realized they both shared a first name and began riffing off of that.
The older Neil turned to him and said, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
