This Isn't Fun Anymore: A Creative's Quest to Defeat Imposter Syndrome (While Losing the Battle with Mental Illness)
An intrusive look into horoscopes, religious OCD, and how depression begets writer's block.
I’m addicted to dopamine hits.
Changing the soaked paper towel when pressing tofu. Finding a pair of men’s shorts for $3 clearance. Ordering the perfect patch to add to my battle jacket. My gut-sourced laughter synching with my wife’s. My dog cuddling me just right in the morning before my ten-minute snooze alarm blares. Finding the perfect song to shatter writer’s block. Testing the protagonist’s name on my tongue and listening to how it rolls right off. Completing a story short enough to print at work, stapling it, and passing it to my mother. Finishing a novel. Re-reading that novel and discovering accidental foreshadowing.
The most potent hit: publication.
As a longtime writer and traditional publishing hopeful, I wedged my heel in the door with “Red Mother in Midday”—a hybrid piece exclusively published in Centaur Lit. To Lynn Mundell, I have so much gratitude.
It was a taste of validation I hadn’t experienced in years, something I had only felt during academia.
As I prepared to record my work—pushing my voice into a smooth intonation, absent of accent—I was unaware of the double-edged sword hanging over my neck.
Curiosity, Astrology, Scrupulosity
My horoscope has accused me of having a superiority-inferiority complex, a fact which I often prove true when I log into Substack and pretend I have myself all figured out. I’m unafraid of being vulnerable online because I intellectualize my feelings—a tendency that creates a hellish ouroboros when I proofread these public diary entries and find the ten-foot fortress built by my own words. How much of this is genuine? These days, I’m plagued with doubt.
I know I can’t invest too deeply into a horoscope without losing myself to neurotic paranoia. Horoscopes are supposed to be fun. This isn’t fun anymore.
I’ve experienced religious delusions in high school, and investing in the stars creates an uncomfortable overlap. I cannot return to a time where I lie in bed, unable to sleep because my projection clock’s numbers add up to six. Even now, I realize my strict adherence to routine stems from the paranoia of jarring an unknowable force out of place. I fear things unknowable.
I feared God, too. When my fourteen-year-old self prayed, she prayed in discomfort, scared of fucking up the prayer with the wrong words or leaving out someone important and God striking them down for her thoughtlessness. “I’m doing it wrong! I’m doing it wrong!” her conscience would nag. “I’m going to die and suffer eternal because I didn’t really mean it when I prayed for my aunt’s sins to be forgiven.”
I was raised Baptist, with a heavy emphasis on Old Testament-style wrathful God Almighty. Women are second-class citizens. Adopted children aren’t real children. Wearing a queer designer—as if anyone in my small southern town could afford Alexander McQueen—resulted in damnation.
I returned to church after the death of my grandfather with the sole purpose of providing company to my grandmother. She, I had decided, was worth the discomfort, and it colored my relationship with religion with insincerity. My grandmother told me that I should love God above all, but I loved her more. I couldn’t quite find it in me to feel bad about it, which strengthened my guilt and furthered the manic prayers.
I slept with a green pocket bible beneath my pillow because I feared what demons slept inside me, unaware that the nightly numerology whispers from the Holy Ghost were obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms—scrupulosity, to be precise.
As it turns out, counting the numbers of a projection clock to ensure they don’t add up to six before closing your eyes does not save you from having nightmares. It’s 2:31 in the morning, and you have to be up at 6:00. GO TO BED! That isn’t the devil speaking through your electronics! You don’t need to turn your bedroom light on and off an even number of times—but not six—to avoid being snagged by demons when you leave the room. Stop opening and shutting your door, stop counting, just stop fucking counting—
The story of how I raised myself from the perdition of Baptist Christianity is uninteresting. I stopped going because of particular family circumstances, and it was the best thing that happened to my mental health in years. I became areligious and ceased fearing the number six.
It was against my better judgment that I downloaded Co-Star sometime in 2018. Frequently, blissfully, I forget about the app.
But when I watch a TikTok discussing rising signs aesthetics, I’ll log in to check my ascendent (cancer, btw). I’ll find vague applicability in the quippy daily horoscope and obsess over it until I’m ready to vomit out my heart.
“My horoscope encouraged me to take a risk for a huge reward, so I submitted to a big publication and was rejected. Did I choose the wrong risk? Why do I never choose right? How bad are my instincts?”
“My horoscope says my Neptune in Capricorn is responsible for tangible goals, but I have zero. What are the cosmic consequences for that? What are the correct goals for someone breaching thirty? Am I the Universe’s laughingstock? ”
“My horoscope warned me about jealous thoughts; I just slipped up and envied someone with more money than sense. Shit, I’m so judgmental. I messed up. That’s why nothing ever goes right for me. I’m a shit person and only rotting further. I’m rotting, I’m fucking rotting—”
I’m aware of Co-Star’s reputation as a bullshit app by astrologists and only useful for checking placements. I learned this before I hit download, and yet it occasionally holds me in a vice-grip—that’s the kicker. The soft parts of my brain cling to it, desperately seeking meaning and understanding in an existence not particularly meant for meaning and understanding.
I yearn to climb to Maslow’s next tier, but I’m stuck at the bottom rung of self-esteem. Self-actualization feels at once within my reach and in another realm altogether.
I have to be careful not to believe so freely in coincidences and ghosts. I’m insatiable, at times, for a morsel of universal truth to dull the pain of existentialism. It’s not that deep. Could be that deep. I could shove my fingers into the earth and keep digging for it.
These roaming thoughts can keep me occupied for days. I’ll think in circles until my head runs dry, if only to have a semblance of recognizing myself in pages of scripture or among the tea leaves. It’s a lonely void above my shoulders.
Delusions of Grandeur
I am prone to derealization.
I’ve always relished moments of solitude paired with a rotating selection of cheap audio gear from portable CDs to MP3s to iPods to smartphones. Music has always taken me to places of fantasy, fueling maladaptive daydreams of magazine interviews in which I discuss my ethos for character creation and meeting my now-disgraced heroes at the Nebula Awards.
Sometimes, I don’t even need the music; my eyes de-focus, and I find a quiet corner of my brain to replay scenarios ad infinitum until I get it right. This trick has been instrumental in solving mismatched plot threads, alleviating writer’s block, and disassociating in school.
This has alleviated the strain of aspiration, too, which is something I assume is preprogrammed in everyone but only accessible by those without chemical imbalances. In lieu of aspiration, I dream; what-ifs are safer than door slams and cause less emotional stress. “I feel large and deeply,” I say, attributing it to being a Taurus. This isn’t fun anymore.
I should have grown out of rejection sensitivity years ago. I’ve been submitting mediocre work since I was sixteen, so where is the thick hide I was promised?
And, dear reader, can you feel the spiral I’ve been sliding down during this retrograde? Does it seep into every serif I type? Drip with the malice I secretly hold for myself? Would you diagnose me, and how? I feel like I’m stuck in a Patrick Bateman monologue where the only way out is waiting for the run-on sentence to end.
I am convinced of my specialness while knowing that I am not special. The dichotomy causes me to fantasize about plunging an athame into my thigh and jerking the handle back and forth as I stare at the screen. The urge is brief and impossible.
Oftentimes, I dream about being belittled, threatened, and disregarded to the point of sobbing myself awake. I love myself so fiercely, but something wedged in between my brain’s soft tissue cannot be convinced. “You are so special,” I tell myself, patting myself on the back as I complete another slice of esoterica. “And you are so very stupid,” I add as the rejections pile.
I know about the Dunning-Kruger effect; of course I’m paranoid that I’m just an oblivious dumbass placing too much self-importance on every constructed syllable.
Reality, Fantasy, and the Crossroads
I’m listening to the sound of my watch click. It’s a twelve-dollar men’s watch from Walmart, purchased to quash the desire to scrounge for a two-hundred and thirty-dollar Breda.
It worked. I enjoy the audible tick tick tick it creates in the quiet moments. I can close my eyes and hone in on it, grounding myself in the reality of pure sensation. I can feel how my clothes cling, how the tags scrape the small of my back and tickle my nape. I can smell the black currant in my perfume and argan oil on the tips of my hair. I can taste my palate and subsequently realize how my tongue’s been smashed against it for the last hour. I can feel how the tension is spawning a terrible ache in my jaw.
For these rare moments, I remember existing. It’s terrible. There are things I have to worry about; there are things that threaten my existence, like money and politics and the irrevocable tie the two share.
Anxiety curls my intestines into new shapes. I’m uncomfortable being a person, to be perceived without an ounce of control over my body’s tableau. Strangers can’t conceive of the hurricane in my head, and I wish I could teach them its wind speed. I often stare in mirrors, finding an unreachable piece of me left in their glare. I ache to explore those mystery pieces, to know the certain je ne sais quo that eludes my reflection’s discerning eyes. What do they, the stranger, see? I’m certain there is a truth about me only evident to the outsider.
It drives me crazy that life cannot be experienced in third-person limited, that I am forced inside the role of first-person objective. But I’m here, gazing just past my nose, which I suppose is better than focusing on my navel. I can see my nose so clearly, and the half-moon that floats in my vision is disquieting. There it is again: proof that I’m alive just as plain as the nose on my—
I’ve come to terms with existence. I had to be because my other choice is facing non-existence, and I’d rather be extant and uncomfortable than sixteen and suicidal again.
Reality is for the birds; where are my headphones and Magdalena Bay’s new album?
Terrible news: I’m aware of escapism’s potent placebo effect, and now it’s not working. Even the clichés I employed here aren’t working—jeez!
My recent endeavor into science fiction—The Last Eidolons—has yielded 24,501 words regarding the exploits of cross-generation mad scientists. This is only a third of what I aimed for, but act two has been frustratingly stalled by the worst case of writer’s block I’ve experienced.
I’ve trunked books. I’ve scrapped books for parts and tossed the rest in the garbage. I have no qualms with wasted time—or, that’s what I tell myself. I’m afraid to admit when I’ve failed and too stubborn to give up yet another project.
“I’ve grown out of that,” I tell myself. “I’m better than the abandoned projects of my teenhood.” I’m not wrong in that regard, but I know letting go is a skill I never learned, too. Perhaps it’s my contradictions that anger me. When you’re stuck between two mindsets, you can never truly be wrong.
But the stubborn truth glowers: this isn’t fun anymore.
I’m at the crossroads now, simultaneously ready to slog my way through a draft I once had endless enthusiasm for and to pivot to my next grand idea in a genre I’m more adept at tackling. My most precious of writing mantras? “If I’m not having fun, then what’s the point!?” To which another personal mantra responds: “If you don’t finish it, you’re a failure. This doesn’t apply to anyone else though, just you! Remember, if you don’t hold yourself to difficult standards, no one else will take you seriously!”
The genesis of The Last Eidolons was my frustration with A.I. usage in creative spaces, but as the issue grows more prevalent, I’m tempted to sit back and see how it all plays out if only to inform my conclusion. That doesn’t preclude me from finishing the damn thing, though. Weren’t you having fun before the NaNoWriMo people called anti-A.I. creatives classists and ableists? (Words mean things, you assholes!)
I confess that my intentions were disingenuous from the start. The Last Eidolons was intended to be a short, pandering novel about a current-day issue, striking while the iron is hot in hopes of hitting the market slightly after word of its damage reaches the most disconnected of ears. It came from a place of passion—of the rage-flavored variety.
But, as all my projects are wont to do, it became real to me. I made mawkish edits of laboratories, a techno-heavy playlist, and fake ads for in-universe products. I devised mini-histories for the neutral evil tech companies and designed their logos. Worst of all, I fell deeply for the protagonists and their Professor Sanguinaire Polidori-esque assistants.
I clawed my way through the set-up, relishing the moments of character interactions and bits of the overwrought prose of the self-serious (me), and arrived at the end of act one with the sword, once again, hanging over my neck.
Oh, god, I’m a fraud.
The duplicitous nature of the project caught up to me, coupled with the one-two punch of complimentary rejections that always managed to deal more damage than the generic auto-response. As a habitual bad-faith interpreter, they read: Oh, you were so close! Sooo close! But you’re inherently inclined to choose the wrong things to write about. Better luck next time!
I had already shifted my goal post: write commercially (well, commercially within the SFF niche) and blow the pants off ‘em. But commercial isn’t fun to me; sticking within parameters and acceptable genre blends doesn’t appeal to me. I was sincerely invested in the characters and what I could say about the transactional relationship between humans and tech and how I could draw parallels to parental relationships. I fell into the habit of metaphor in no time flat, and it discouraged me. Was I incapable of change?
Furthermore, did I have the chops for traditional publishing? And that’s the rub, isn’t it? When you put work into something for sixteen years to little result, you get the sensation of being ajar—of standing on the side of the road rather than walking on it.
I drag my feet at times, sure, but wasn’t my obsession enough? Haven’t I sacrificed enough of my time? Haven’t I carved off enough chunks of my heart to warrant a chance? No one owes me anything, though, and if an industry as sluggish as trad publishing can’t see my forest for the trees, then I need to do some pruning.
In The Last Eidolons, one protagonist explains to her lab partner that their passed-over co-worker was not “built for the madness” of the resurrective project to which they are assigned. She, however, was made precisely for this—fictionally and metaphysically. I often wonder if I, too, was built for the madness.
When I set out to write this, I aimed to claw my way out of a slump, to arrive at a conclusion that would help put these aimless feelings to rest. I’m standing on the precipice of a finish line, but I’m unable to see the tape.
I can dig so deep into these emotions and then pop out on the other side of the earth, their roots having truly eluded me. Where is the end of this circular thinking?
Even as I review my words now, I struggle to decide what pieces of thought origami to toss in the fire.
But, dear reader, I am an unreliable narrator—that is to say, a liar.
Conclusions For Waking Sleep Paralysis
How much of this did you believe? How much of my bared soul felt true to your eyes, touched something nestled inside you that refuse to acknowledge? How much negative self-talk written in a depressive episode can be taken for fact?
I have always been plagued by self-doubt and a loose grip on my personhood, but my hands are stronger now, my grip firmer than before. Occasionally, my fingers slip, but at the end of the day, they’re still holding on, still typing, still creating.
My original conclusion to this piece was thus: “I quit.” I was planning on quitting being a writer and quitting being the person I’ve built brick by brick for twenty-nine years. But as I untangled myself, I found her to be loveable and far too precious to abandon.
I uninstalled Co-Star. I have to push aside the things that stand in the way of knowing myself, and I know myself beyond what the stars have to say about me.
And though I’ve navigated its spiral a victor, I couldn’t help but smile at my final horoscope.
Sometimes shutting the fuck up is a virtue. I think I’ll search for sea glass among the sand instead—and no, that’s not a metaphor.