Inside me there are at least two voices—no doubt more, but let’s start there. One is loud, sharp, and extremely opinionated. She’d make a great lawyer—fast, ruthless, never unsure of herself. That’s my ego. The other is strange and ephemeral. It floats somewhere around my mind, occasionally landing right between my eyes like a nagging thought. It doesn’t tell me what to do. It just gestures quietly, like: That way. That’s the voice of my gifts.

Impostor syndrome whispers that your voice doesn’t matter, that you’re unworthy of visibility, that you are not the expert others believe you to be. But here’s the truth: You cannot be an impostor of your own life.

If you wait until things are perfect, you’ll be waiting the rest of your life. That feeling of readiness is never coming. The only way out is to start where you are. To start messy. To start now.

We’ve been sold a lie about the creative process—that it should be clean, predictable, and effortless. But the truth is much wilder, much messier than we could ever know. Creativity, like nature itself, is turbulent, untamable, and full of contradictions. 

Being human means living in constant evolution—a perpetual unfolding that only ceases the day we die. This means we'll never feel fully self-expressed, at least not how we imagine. Every day, we wake up in the correct configuration—scientifically, spiritually, and existentially—even if it doesn’t feel that way. Whatever we are, right now, is what’s right for right now. But what if we still want more?

Self-actualization is like a constant, unseen evolution, a natural, organic unfolding that happens as we live, breathe, and simply exist. But just as invasive species or a lack of necessary conditions like sunlight can hinder a forest's growth, so too can our natural state of becoming be obstructed by the noise of modern life and the weight of cultural conditioning.