It's impostor syndrome, something my wife, Amanda christened the fraud police. In my case, I was convinced there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard. I don't know why he had a clipboard. But in my head, he always had a clipboard wouldn't be there to tell me it was all over and they've caught up with me. And now I would have to go and get a real job. One that didn't consist of making things up and writing them down. And reading books I wanted to read and then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job, I would have to get up early in the morning and wear a tie and not make things up anymore. The problems of success, they're real. And with luck, you'll experience them. The point where you stopped saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you throw in the ocean are all coming back. And you have to learn to say no. I watched my peers and my friends and the ones who were older than me, I'd watch how miserable some of them were. I'd listen to them telling me they couldn't envisage a world where they did what they've always wanted to do anymore. Because now they had to earn a certain amount every month just to keep where they were. They couldn't go and do the things that mattered and that they really wanted to do. And that seemed as big a tragedy as any problem of failure. And after that, the biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you're successful. There was a day when I looked up and realized that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby. I started answering fewer emails and was relieved to find I was writing much more. Fourthly, I hope you'll make mistakes. If you make mistakes, it means you're out there doing something. And the mistakes in themselves can be very useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the a's and the O. And I thought Caroline looks almost like a real name. Remember, whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, singer, a designer, whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique, you have the ability to make art and for me For so many of the people I've known that's been a lifesaver, the ultimate lifesaver, it gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones. Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong in life, and in love and in business and in friendship, and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. Make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician. Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor. Make good art. IRS on your trail, make good art Cat, cat exploded, make good art. Someone on the internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil, or it's all been done before, make good. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away. That doesn't even matter. Do what only you can do best. Make good. Make it on the bad days. Make it on the good days too. And fifthly while you're at it, make your day the stuff that only you can do. The urge starting out is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we'd sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have, that nobody else has, is you. Your voice, your mind your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right. The things I've done that work the best were the things I was the least certain about the store is where I was sure they pay the work or more likely be the kind of embarrassing failures that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time.