If you're anything like me, you probably also sit by the computer with a blank page, unaware of what to write or how to do it. You're questioning who you are as a writer. You're questioning whether you are a writer in the first place. Writer's block is real, and it's making you feel like a real imposter right now.

I don't know exactly how you feel in those moments. But I will share with you one thing I do that doesn't make me feel like an imposter, that helps me regain my motivation of why I do this whole writing thing in the first place and what it means to me.

I re-read my old work, my old articles. I'm reminded that people actually liked those articles and got valuable and insightful lessons from reading those articles. At a certain level, that's really valuable, and I have personally cried at some of the kind and endearing comments that those people have left me.

But while I value those comments, claps, and kind sentiments, what matters most is what I got from writing that piece, and the peace it left me in that moment. What helps a lot too is re-reading pieces. I look at some I wrote in the past and internally ask myself, "did I actually write this?"

I'm stunned and in disbelief. I realize I'm not actually an imposter. I realize that I actually am a capable writer. I realize that I write for myself, not for the gratification of others. I write for a lot of reasons: therapy, processing life events, and expressing myself in my best form of communication, among many reasons. As Robert Frost once famously said about being a poet, I'm a writer by condition, not profession.

And sometimes, no matter what benefits writing has had for me, I forget that I am a writer. Humans have a knack for having short memories, for better or worse, so sometimes we, as writers, forget that we write. We lose confidence in our abilities, and we wonder how or why we were able to write everything we did in the first place.

Memory is powerful, but evidence must back memory. Sometimes, to truly remember who we are we need to see, more than we do just hear and remember.

Right now, I'm reading and reflecting through an old article that I wrote. I almost forgot that I write it, and yes, it did get good reception, but it brings a sense of nostalgia, like I'm going back in time. I'm going back to when I wrote the article to begin with, to the emotions of pain and yet hope I had at the time.

To be put in that mood, to be reminded of the fact that I actually wrote that article, motivates me to keep going. The self-doubt and Imposter Syndrome is natural. If we didn't move past it, we wouldn't be writers to begin with. It's a part of the game, and sometimes that barrier leads us to give up and come back another day. Sometimes the emotional and mental fortitude it takes to transcend that barrier leads our pieces to be even stronger. Sometimes, you have to just endure it and just write.

But if you want to move past the barriers of writer's block and Imposter's Syndrome, take some time to look back at what you wrote before, from the lens of a reader, not as the writer yourself. Every time I look back at something I've read before, I see something different. There's no reason why we should take an exception for our own work.

There's the gut feeling, as a more mature and better writer now, that you'll think "wow, this is complete garbage. What was I thinking?" But if you have that feeling, that's good! It means you've gotten better and improved substantially as a writer that you can see some of your old work and condescending towards it. You'll think that you should have been better, that you should have not written this or re-arranged a sentence in a way. But you couldn't have done any better. That's where you were at the time.

So re-read your past work, and I can assure you: you'll be glad you did it.