Dispatches from the Anxiety Den: I Know My Shit… Just Not This Shit

I have a master’s degree in music.
Clarinet, to be exact.

I’m not the next Mozart, but I know my shit. I’ve trained, performed, taught, analyzed, and rebuilt my embouchure enough times to have the receipts. When I talk about clarinet technique, people listen, and not because I’m loud (though I often am).

In music, I know how to get better. I can hear mistakes, identify patterns, and fix them. I know the path from “this sounds like garbage” to “this makes people feel something.”

Writing, though? Whole different beast.

When I write, it lights up the same creative joy centers that composing or performing do — that feeling of building something beautiful out of chaos. But here’s the kicker: I’m not an expert. I don’t have the education behind me. I barely passed high school English. I’m dyslexic, which means grammar, and I have an ongoing feud that neither of us is winning.

I don’t teach this. I don’t know all the rules. And while I devour craft books and writing podcasts, I don’t always know whose advice is gold and whose is snake oil wrapped in metaphors.

So, every time I write, there’s a voice that whispers,
You don’t know what you’re doing.

But here’s what I’m learning:
Neither did I, when I first picked up the clarinet.

Expertise doesn’t erase uncertainty, it just teaches you how to work with it. I’ve spent years telling my students that failure isn’t proof you can’t, it’s proof you’re trying. Turns out, I needed to tell myself the same thing.

Maybe that’s what imposter syndrome really is: the space between what you know and what you feel.

I may not be an expert writer yet, but I know how to practice.
I know how to listen.
And I know how to chase the thing that makes me feel alive, even when I’m sure I’m faking it.

That’s enough. For now.