When your entire career is built on subjective matters, when a matter of taste can get you paid or not, it’s not surprising that we are all plagued at some point or other by imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome gets us all, the overwhelming dread that we’ve been hired for a job that we can’t possibly do, that at any minute we’re going to be busted and put on show for the fake we are. The real kicker comes when you even completed the work, been paid and congratulated and still, that little voice creeps in and tells you, “someone else could have done it better”.
I was at a dinner once before a show, sat with the owners of the company that we were playing for that night. We knew them well, and were all on a friendly basis. But I was clearly showing that I believed I was out of my depth amongst them, as one of them leaned over with a reassuring smile and said, “You’re always supposed to be somewhere, if someone asked you to be there.” This sentence has become my entire career’s mantra.
The industry is built on word of mouth advertisement, that means that you’re booked for a job based on someone’s opinion of your previous work. So if you’re booked, someone, somewhere has good things to say about you. These are the thought patterns that you have to keep in mind, it’s easy to become overwhelmed but I would bet all the things I own that nearly everyone in any arts based industry is going through exactly the same thing.