SJ Longthorne

Wondering how much writer (or equivalent) imposter syndrome is down to those around us repeating over and over that "you've wasted your degree", "it's never going to happen" and "hardly anyone makes it, so why should you?"

My social circles drummed into me that my dreams were impossible for all but a few exceptions, which I was not. So now that they're becoming reality, I find that hard to accept, because everything I know tells me this wasn't supposed to happen. There's been a mistake.

A lot of people go off about the idealistic parenting of the nineties, saying it somehow ruined my generation. But that's not the issue here. The issue is the lengths others took thereafter to compensate for and annihilate my ambitions.

We're made to feel like failures before we've even had the opportunity to fail. No wonder tall poppy syndrome is so rife.