You’re not alone in thinking along the lines of “self=fraud”—but you know that.

I am *delighted* that I can’t even tell you how it is that I came across your Web log just now; it had to do with friends-of-friends-and-acquaintances matching on blogrolling.com.  But it’s really good that I did.  Just beginning to write my dissertation, I ask myself often these days just how to start writing anything.  Forget thesis; reviews.  Articles.  Web log posts.  Letters to friends.  Responding works just fine, it’s writing something new that’s scary.

Now that I have evidence that you over in the Real World are struggling with the same things, at the same time as you write brilliantly articulate posts, my heart is filled with the hope that it’s okay to be at a loss for words.  As long as the cause of this loss is too much to say, not too little.

I’m a fraud.  I know nowhere near as much as they seem to think I do.  Worse, I know nowhere near as much as they do.  They’re all off writing their articles and being brilliant, and they have no idea how worried I am about all this, because they don’t experience any such worries.  The only reason to be this anxious, in fact, is because I’m right when I think that I’m a fraud.  And one day, they’re going to look up from being brilliant and see some stupid thing I’ve written and realize, at last, that I am in fact a fraud.

(Is it painfully obvious that I come up for tenure this year?)

By the way, (belated) happy blog-anniversary!