Okay so this is gonna sound super stupid but like, anyone else ever feel like a complete FAKE? I mean, really truly a fraud. I just got out of this meeting at work, right? And it was one of those BIG meetings, with the fancy creative director and some super important client, and we're talking about like… branding for a new luxury car. And I'm there, sitting at this enormous shiny table, with my sketch pad and my perfectly sharpened pencils (which, btw, I bought just for these meetings so I'd look more legit), and they're all throwing around words like "semiotics" and "gestalt principles" and "typographic hierarchy." And I'm just… nodding. Like I know what they’re talking about. Like I learned all this in some expensive art school. But the thing is, I didn't. I learned it all from YouTube tutorials and free online courses during naptime, back when the kids were little. When I was supposed to be folding laundry or making organic baby food, I was secretly teaching myself Illustrator. And the whole time, I'm just praying no one asks me to EXPLAIN anything too theoretical. Because if they did, my whole house of cards would come crashing down. I’d be exposed as the stay-at-home mom who just kinda… winged it. It feels like such a betrayal, doesn't it? To myself, to my old life. Like I should be grateful for this opportunity, and I am, don't get me wrong. My parents are getting older and need help, and the kids are teenagers now and college is looming and suddenly I NEEDED to do something, needed to be ME again. But then I get this job, this DREAM job really, after years of feeling invisible, and now I'm just terrified every day someone's gonna realize I don't belong. Like I missed some fundamental class that everyone else took and assumes I did too. Am I the only one who feels like this? Like we’re all just kinda bluffing our way through life sometimes, hoping no one calls our hand? And maybe it's just a midlife thing, this constant feeling of not being enough, not knowing enough. Or maybe it’s just me, staring at a blank whiteboard full of high-minded design concepts, wondering if I just got lucky and someday that luck's gonna run out and everyone's gonna see me for the suburban mom who just wanted to make pretty pictures... and kinda forgot how to spell some big words in the process. Gosh. What if they Google my portfolio and it's just… gone? I deleted the old stuff. I mean, all the stuff for the PTA bake sale posters. That’s probably fine. Right?