imposter syndrome and the second coming of fred savage

Last night AK and I binge-watched the first three episodes of Friends from College, a Netflix comedy starring Keegan-Michael Key, Fred Savage, and Annie Parisse as, well, friends from college whose lives get re-intertwined when they all end up in New York. Keegan-Michael Key is Ethan, a literary novelist in search of commercial success. Fred Savage is his agent. Annie Parisse is the woman he’s been casually hooking up with on out-of-town visits for twenty years, despite being married to another college friend, Lisa (Cobie Smulders). The show is clever and real, despite some loopy plotlines (replacing a dead bunny, writing while high, etc.). I enjoyed many literal lols, like when the group tries to figure out whether Marianne’s (Jae Suh Park) experimental, cross-gender production of Streetcar has started or not.

Having a creative crisis in a very spacious apartment.

I also paused the show a handful of times to nervously ask AK things like “Do you think I’ll ever publish another novel? If there was a character who’d published a couple of small press novels and was struggling to get her third out there, and only had a little bit of time to write, would she be seen as sympathetic, or a failure-slash-joke?” and “Oh no, their son on the show is named Dashiell. Do you think it will blow up? Do you think, like, even if we didn’t choose the most unusual name, it’s still not at a Jayden-slash-Noah level?”

Don't underestimate Marianne or her bunny.

I’ve blogged about this before, but when I was in middle school, I could not watch The Wonder Years because I was constantly comparing myself to Fred Savage. He was supposedly a struggling preteen, but he kissed Winnie Cooper years before I kissed anyone. He was a giant mess of first-world problems, as far as my seventh grade self was concerned.

And now he’s a super successful literary agent with a doctor husband (a deadpan Billy Eichner) and an immense New York apartment. Damn you, Fred Savage, must you haunt my whole life? Why must you always be three degrees cooler than I am, even when you are not playing anyone particularly cool?

Ethan has "won a bunch of literary prizes no one has heard of." I would take that!

I’ve been thinking about imposter syndrome, which stems from comparing other people’s outsides to our own insecure insides, as I head into a new job.

It seems like I was just writing about leaving Poets & Writers for Homeboy Industries, but in fact it’s been almost four years. An entire college education, complete with amazing teachers, hard lessons and unforgettable friends. As I told Fr. Greg, Homeboy has redrawn the shape of my heart for the better.

It’s a frenetic, beautiful, fascinating, rare place to work. It is a privilege. It’s also really hard at times, especially during the moments when I didn’t have the mentors I needed. Now I have Ed, who is a sweetheart and an incredible mentor. He and a handful of others helped me see I might actually have something to say; that despite my continued belief that savvy implementers and independent thinkers are every bit as important as leaders, I might want to actually, um, lead.

Nerd alert: I have nonprofit crushes.

That’s part of what brings me to 826LA, an organization I’ve had a nonprofit crush on for years. Starting a week from today, I’m going to be their Development Manager. The other part of what brings me to the doors of 826’s Time Travel Mart is, of course, creative writing. The opportunity to immerse myself in a world where people love words as much as I do—where they invest in empowering underserved kids to write—was too good to pass up. So I didn’t pass it up.

Heading up fundraising for a small-but-not-tiny organization is mildly terrifying to me, which is where imposter syndrome comes in. As I waited to hear back about the job, I kept picturing my hypothetical competition. She would have a ton of experience with major donors. She would be fluent in Spanish and a snappy dresser.

You can see how I envied these smooth operators.

The good part about being as old as Fred Savage is that I can recognize imposter syndrome for what it is. I don’t think of myself as an amazing fundraiser, or even a fundraiser at all, but I have faith in my ability to learn. I have faith in my ability to create a to-do list and go through it methodically, which is all a development plan is. I have faith in my ability to communicate what’s exciting and important about a thing I love, and that’s all nonprofit fundraising is.

Homeboy tries to help homies see that they are not the worst story they’ve heard about themselves (one undoubtedly told first by a parent, reinforced by legal and educational systems, and most damagingly repeated by themselves). So I try to take that to heart. The voices in my head say I’m over-privileged, lazy, selfish, trauma-scarred, destined for failure or at least mediocrity, and undeserving of most of the many good things that have happened to me.

It would be easy to channel those insecurities into a belief that nowhere besides Homeboy, my beloved Island of Misfit Toys, would put up with me. It’s the same thinking that causes trainees to relapse during the 17^th month of an 18-month program. It’s the job of those of us who love damaged people to help them see beyond us. (Dar Williams has a song about it, where she says The farther you go, the closer you are to me.)

I landed at Homeboy breathless from four years of trauma, and it was hard for me to believe that there would be a post-post-traumatic period, but I think I’m entering it. Which is to say I am still a little jumpy, but I have a renewed faith in the sun’s likelihood of rising the next day. I am willing to consider that I am not destined to be a lifelong drama queen, even though I will never again be the straight-A student on a steady upward march. I’m looking for that third thing. That third or fourth self.

Ooh, she's got a point.

Sometimes I think that all this Brene Brown-ish self-talk, while true and necessary, might be better activated through service to others. Like, sure, I’m beautiful and good and all that, but how about a little less posting of Pinterest-y quotes and a little more volunteering? Still, maybe the latter begets the former. Or vice versa. The stream of love and self-love flows in many directions.

Mine is flowing west down Sunset to Echo Park, site of my next wonder years.