You Can't Outrun Your Self Image

There’s a certain kind of person who embodies a paradox so insufferable and so suffocating that it’s a miracle they don’t collapse in on themselves. This person is typically in their twenties, possibly early thirties if they’ve really committed to the bit, and they call themselves a “creative.” This is not to be confused with someone who actually creates things. No, this is the person whose primary act of creation is the curation of a self-image. They identify as a creative the same way someone might identify as an Aquarius or as gluten-intolerant. It’s a self-assigned label that is completely detached from reality.

And let me be clear, this is not the same as saying someone is a writer because they write, or a musician because they make music. This is a category of person who latches onto the idea of being creative in the same way a child latches onto their Halloween costume.

I listened to a podcast the other day where one of these people called in to the show. A 27-year-old man, lost in life, working some shitty job, but fashioning himself as a “creative.” That exact word he used. And if there is an award for the single most insufferable way to describe oneself, this would take gold. Because at a certain point, there has to be a mirror somewhere in the equation, right? A mirror, a moment of reflection, a pause to consider that if one were truly creative, one would be creating, rather than just identifying as the sort of person who might get around to doing something of note.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. And if you do nothing, then you are, effectively, nothing. A nobody in the arena of whatever it is you claim to be.

But this is the era we live in. A time when people are simultaneously full of themselves while also being the most insecure cohort of people to ever exist. Everyone walks around like they’re hot shit while also requiring near-constant validation from an audience of digital strangers. It’s all fake. The confidence, the achievements, the posturing, the self-image. And self-image is the kicker here, because the one thing you can never, ever outrun is what you truly think about yourself when no one’s watching. You can wear the “creative” label all you want, but if you spend every night staring at the ceiling, quietly panicking about your own fraudulence, the jig is already up.

There’s a pattern among these so-called “creatives.” At a certain point, they settle into the failure, and they start to like it. It’s cozy. The contempt they feel from others all feeds into the narrative that they are misunderstood geniuses, unappreciated, too pure for the cold world of capitalism. But deep down, what they really enjoy is the out. The ready-made excuse. There is safety in failure, because as long as you never try, you never have to face the reality that you were never actually good enough in the first place.

The real game of life is all about how you handle your self-image. These failure to launch types absolutely despise the person they see in the mirror when faced with reality. So they avoid the mirror entirely, because then they never have to confront the reality that they might not measure up. They put everything off until some mystical future date when suddenly everything will just click. But that day isn’t coming.

This is the reality. You are not a creative. You are a person who has instead opted to be a curator of identity, a self-brander, an “aesthetic.” At some point, you either do something or you don’t. But do away with the self-narratives, please.

If you’re not the type to take the leap today, you won’t be the type to take it tomorrow. And the reason you don’t take it isn’t because of what other people might think of you if you fail. It’s because of what you will think of yourself.

That’s the part no one likes to admit. It’s easy to pin it on external judgment. What if people think you’re untalented? What if they see your work and roll their eyes? But that’s just a smokescreen. The real fear is that you’ll try and be forced to reckon with the possibility that you aren’t as special as you told yourself you were.

Because deep down, whatever you think others think about you is really what you think about yourself. You aren’t afraid of their judgment, you’re afraid of confirming your own. If you never take the leap, you never have to confront that quiet, gnawing suspicion that you were never good enough. That you might be ordinary. That you might have spent years building an identity around something you never had the talent to fully pursue.

And so you stall. You sit in the comfort of potential, because as long as you’re a “work in progress,” you can keep telling yourself the story that one day, eventually, you’ll make something great.

But the longer you hide behind a curated self-image, the more it rots you from the inside out. That “imposter syndrome” people talk about (another bullshit term btw) is not because you haven’t “made it” yet. It’s because deep down, you know you’re bullshitting yourself.

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