One thing I find myself doing quite often is that I’ll sit down to write a blog post about something that interests me or that I’ve been thinking about, and before I even get through the first paragraph I find myself thinking: “There is no point in this. This has been written about hundreds of times before by people a lot smarter and more competent than me”. And then I’ll delete what little I’ve written and move on to something else.

Why should anyone care what I have to say about insert topic here?

I realize that as an elder millennial, and very Scandinavian person, that this is largely The Law of Jante rearing its ugly head. Throw a little imposter syndrome into the mix and you’ve got the perfect recipe for being permanently stuck at the starting line.

This has been on my mind a lot lately. It took quite a bit of time for me to get comfortable with sharing my art online. I’m still struggling with it at times, but I usually don’t think too much about it. I’d like to eventually get to that stage with my blog and writing as well.

There is another factor that makes me hesitate to share more of my thoughts online. And that is the legions of Terminally Online trolls spouting uninformed, hyper-concentrated bullshit in every direction with the confidence of someone who just won an Olympic medal. There is nothing I detest more than that particular group. And for the life of me, I never want anyone to think of me as one of those people.

And so, instead of putting my thoughts out there and trusting that people believe that I have the capacity for critical thinking and to have my mind changed when presented with new evidence, I keep my thoughts to myself.

That’s pretty silly when you really think about it.