Recently I've been enjoying some moderate success in terms of journalism and writing; this week I published three articles on V Magazine and will hopefully be writing more for them in the future. Although I am proud of the work I've done, at the same time, I also feel undeserving.
I am lucky to have discovered my passions pretty early on in life, and, for better or worse, I decided to pursue them as soon as I could. I've been talking to editors and pitching publications since I was thirteen. I have more rejection letters than I can count.
At some point, emailing/pitching people became a habit, a mindless action that I did without expecting anything as a result, until I got an email from HelloGiggles saying that they wanted to publish my article. This was at the end of my freshmen year of high school and I was ecstatic. But I was also no longer sure if my work was worthy of recognition, because I had forgotten that when you submit work places, it might get accepted, and I worried that maybe my work was never meant to be published at all. I knew rejection was part of the process, but I had also sort of romanticized the idea of being rejected but persistent and I imagined getting my first writing job years and years later after I had been sufficiently scorned and discarded, so that I could really earn the title of writer.
I had a similar feeling this week. I am still awestruck people want to read my writing, let alone publish it. I have impostor syndrome. I'm terrified that someday someone will realize that they have no reason to listen to me, to hear about what I think. But the only solution to this is to continue working, to try to gain expertise and validity.
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