At some point...

    Once I was talking to some co-workers, music teachers, about Jazz. I don't remember how we got on the topic, but it became apparent pretty quickly that only one of the three people I was talking to also knew and loved the jazz musicians I grew up on -- Dave Brubeck, Chet Baker, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Vince Guaraldi, Jiao and Astrid Gilberto. And in that moment I realized, maybe I'm not just faking it when I say 'I love jazz music.' 

    Because up until that point, I felt a little like a fraud when I said that I did. I mean, I've never been a jazz musician. I love and can sing along with Billie Holiday or Natalie Cole or Madeleine Peyroux or Dianna Krall, but to me, that somehow didn't quite qualify me as a true lover of jazz. I didn't know what I thought that criteria was, I was just sure that I hadn't met them. 

    And then, that day, falling down a conversational rabbit hole with the other person who loved the genre in some of the same ways I did, around other people who did play jazz, I felt somehow validated. And my claim suddenly became not just a thing I said with caveats in my mind. Are there other who know and love the genre more deeply and well than I do? Unquestionably. But, I no longer feel that my love of jazz music needs to be qualified in some way. 

    At some point, the things you love and want to know more about become the things you know well enough to not feel like an imposter anymore. So, don't wait too long. Embrace the things you are passionate about unreservedly. 



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