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Past mistakes

September 10, 2003 Psych 101, QandA

Now that you look back on your career, what was the single biggest mistake
or wrong assumption you made early on that someone else could learn from?

–Damion

From the moment I got to Los Angeles, I felt I didn’t deserve to be here.
I was never a classic movie buff; I didn’t have a favorite director; my Honda
was rusting out, but not in a glamorous, beauty-in-poverty way.

I felt like a fraud, an imposter. Worse, I was taking up a slot that some
genuinely deserving person should have gotten. Working in Hollywood was never
my childhood dream. It was almost a flip-of-the-coin decision. For all I knew,
the next Spielberg was stuck flipping burgers in Wichita because I had taken
the last available opening.

Honestly, I felt this way for about three years. I kept waiting to get found
out and sent back to the Midwest.

Thinking this way was easily the biggest mistake I made. When you don’t think
you deserve to be in the room, no one else will, either.

But the truth, which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, is that
all of the smart, confident people I was meeting really didn’t know any more
than I did. Okay, I had never seen Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS. But I had seen
every episode of "Bewitched," and that was just as valid.

And I could write better than most of them. That seems like an egotistical
statement, but considering I was marking myself lower in every other category,
that lone bright spot was a beacon of hope.

It’s hard to synthesize this advice without making sound like insipid pabulum, "just
believe in yourself." Perhaps it’s best expressed in the negative: "you’re
no stupider than everyone around you."

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