Traveling With Imposter Syndrome
Battling reality when comfort and clarity disappear
I’ve stepped foot in nearly 30 states in the past three months. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real being in so many new places.
Literally.
Tour managing a band, I’ve been a part of over 50 live music events since the beginning of February — traveling by van to each place. Almost all of these places have been new to me.
This rapid collection of new experiences is an insanely cool feeling. I’ve hiked in the Grand Canyon, dipped my toes in the Atlantic Ocean, walked through New York City, and driven through the hills of California.
It was impossible to not look around every once in and question whether any of it was real.
Experience overload is a phenomenon that is hard to come by. I certainly hadn’t until taking this job. Most of us choose comfort and clarity. We don’t delve into the unknown any more than we need to.
We do the work we know. We visit the places we know. We see the people we know. We collect a few cool experiences a year and move on.
Life flies by. Few questions are asked. Many regrets are had.
This overload of experience is exactly why I took the job. I had no experience in the music business. I had traveled very little. I was bored of working from my couch and never leaving my city.
So I then started leaving my city… a lot. A few weeks into the job, we stayed at an Airbnb in Tampa, Florida, and I began to really question my surroundings.
I had just been to Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, and all the states in between. How the hell could I now be in Florida? It made no sense.
I was with people I barely knew. I was doing things I had never done before. It was impossible to grasp whether this was reality.
It reminded me of Mac Miller, a musician that’s death could partially be attributed to a lack of connection with reality. He often discussed this in his music — questioning the world and his place in it. He seemed to feel disconnected from his surroundings at all times. Only substances could take him away from that.
