Impostor Primavera

From what I can tell, impostor syndrome is an industry affliction of epidemic proportions. Everywhere you look, someone is suffering from pangs of insecurity, clangs of inadequacy and fangs of abject terror at the prospect of being outed as an outright fraud. To harangue an impostor takes minimal effort but yields maximal joy. Inside broom closets, under mouse traps, buried in crystal bowls of colorful jellybeans, there are people who feel like they don’t belong. It could be a lie on their job application, a half-truth told during the interview process or usually, it’s all just in their head.

Therefore, it’s understandable that you figured I’m yet another self-identified impostor struggling his way through advertising. But you’d be wrong. 

Right in time for Easter, my inclinations are more messianic than anything else – with a smattering of rabbit-footed charm. The reason is simple. I stayed in New York City in 2020 when a great many people fled the area. I had a car and I could have left anytime. I did leave sometimes though. Look, I wasn’t there the whole time – it’s not like I was an essential worker. I found a second home upstate, a leaky houseboat in Maine, a motorless VW Vanagon roomy enough to support a growing family. But aside from that, I stayed true to my roots as a New Yorker.

 

I camped, I bivouacked, I slept on the side of the road. All told, I spent approximately two full days in the city last year. But New York, as Billy Joel tells us, isn’t a city, a state, or even a real place, but a state of mind. It's not a sewer, a cesspool, or a haven for base criminality. It's just a thought, an idea, a way of being. 

For instance, there are people who live there their entire lives, never venturing beyond the five boroughs. However, that alone doesn’t make a person a New Yorker. Those people are the real impostors, thinking their birth certificate and history of paying taxes somehow serves as validation. To me, true New Yorkers don’t even live in the city. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t. They shouldn’t.

 

They're already on Mars. Or in Jersey.