Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

One of the biggest things that I deal with daily is Imposter Syndrome. When I came into college I was with my peers who had written more music than I had. I felt as if I was always behind when it came to being successful. I always looked at my work with a hyper-critical lens because I was always comparing it to others. I was always unhappy with the work that I had produced and felt as if I was not getting any better. It took a while for me to figure out why I never was happy with what I was making.

After a lot of thinking and talking to other people and professionals I realized that Imposter Syndrome is something that a lot of people in creative professions deal with. Something I realized is that everyone has their niche, I am not the type of person to entirely plan out the details of my new compositions but for others, that is how they work. You cannot compare your work to others. I have an entirely different type of music than my fellow peers and that is great. It lets me have a difference compared to other people that helps me stand out.

It is hard to make music sometimes for me because I want everything I make to be perfect. However, to grow you need to be able to write music and be okay with it not being your magnum opus. A lot of the time you can repurpose and reuse the music that can help make future products a lot easier to write. It also is a good habit of writing more often and being able to go into old projects and pick out what worked well and what was something that needed a little adjusting or changing to make it enhance the piece more.