That’s how I feel all the time.
They say “Fake it until you make it.”
That must be why I feel that way because I have to fake it often.
I faked being a reader. I just brought a book with me everyday on the train, I tried reading a few lines each day, I wouldn’t read to finish a book, I wouldn’t read to learn, I wouldn’t read to write a review. I just read and let it be whatever it would be. I faked it for a while. Miraculously, I became more comfortable with reading. I can read more now, I can focus on the books better now, I can summarize the lessons now, and I call myself a reader now. I don’t need to fake anymore. I simply am.
Same with being a writer. I was never able to call myself a writer before. I felt that nothing granted me being a writer. I hadn’t written or published a book, I didn’t have a blog, I didn’t have articles published. I was just a nobody. No one affirmed my ability or talent. So I had to fake it. I started writing. I still remember more than 7 years ago, in 2018, I started writing, on a sleeping bus in Vietnam from Hanoi to Hue. I wrote about Sense8, a Netflix series that I watched. I wrote two full pages, over 1,500 words, which would never be published or shared anywhere. I have many of those incomplete, unfinished, half-written posts in my OneNote. I always felt it was a waste of time if I wrote something without being able to share them. But I kept writing and sometimes I shared my writings on social media and with the world. There are so many lessons I’d learnt from that “faking” process. The most important lesson is to simply WRITE. After 7 years, I have one article published on CBC News Calgary just last year in 2023. Even though I got a lot of support from the CBC editor, I gained confidence in my writing after that and I continued on. I write a lot more and with much more confidence now. And again, miraculously, I am so comfortably calling myself a “writer” now. No longer I have to fake it, no longer I felt lacking, no longer I am a hypocrite. I am a WRITER.
I learn to appreciate the saying: YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO now.
I am what I do, even if I have to start out as a hypocrite, even if I have to fake it.
I learn to not be afraid of faking to be someone to get over the learning curve, to cope with the challenges of doing something really bad, to reach my goal of being that person later.
Start doing what you love doing today and do it everyday.
Regards,
Thao
#Day27 #30DayWritingChallenge