Meet Lydia Kim

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lydia Kim. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Lydia, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

This is a bit of a cheat: I don’t know that I ever had imposter syndrome per se, or at least not strongly, meaning, I have not often felt I was a fraud about to be exposed. I have felt with some new opportunities or projects (that required me to level up) that I might fail, that perhaps I’d already done what I could do and this new things before me was beyond my capabilities. But there’s the mix of being a woman of color, being the eldest daughter of an immigrant family (read: early independence and self-reliance) and a habit of masking / compensating behaviors that made me just dive in, especially when it came to paid work. What choice did we have? We just have to do it, and I was too proud or afraid to ask too many questions. (I would do that differently if I had to do it over again: I would ask more questions and definitely ask for more help.) Self-reliance in overdrive, I would white-knuckle my way through, do the best I could. When it came to my creative pursuits, however, I could not white-knuckle my way through. I could not force a story to come out. I had to wait, feed my mind, rest my mind, give it the quiet and space to let ideas and notions knock around and into each other. This has been the most liberating and humbling lesson: the creative work that means the most to me refuses to be the product of stress and pressure. It comes when I am allowing ease, honesty, and play; it cannot be faked. It’s impossible to be an imposter when being creative.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

For paid work, I do brand and business strategy, write a lot of creative briefs, etc. It’s the most fun when a brand wants help telling a story, about its origins, next chapters, fumbles and amends, innovations or vision. Even the most storied brands often want a new way of talking about themselves, and thinking of creative ways to exist in the world is a good challenge. Are they reflecting culture or leading it?

For lightly paid work, I am a writer, short stories, essays, and I wrote a novel, which is currently with my agent (!). My themes tend towards struggles to be oneself, manipulating memory, personal history, cycle-breaking, done mostly through family tragi-comedies, with a touch of the veiled world, ghosts of mothers, for example, or strange bodily phenomenon. I love reading poetry though I do not write it (I have written one poem) and I absolutely love reading other people’s work in progress and then telling them how fantastic it is. Though I am newly entering the world of publishing, I’m looking forward to the ups and downs of what comes next.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’m stubborn (fire sign, first born, Korean, hate not knowing) so if I need to figure it out, I will. Group projects, I’m happy to take the lead and have had to learn to take a step back. The stubbornness has served me well, too; not being easily deterred can make for quantum leaps in understanding. But I need to learn that I don’t control very much.

I’m a generalist in specialist’s clothing. Though I majored in English and taught English lit for many years, I love to dabble, collect facts and stories about anything and everything. I’m inclined to listen and remember, read and watch and catalogue. In all three of my careers (teaching, strategy, writing) I’ve been able to make connections across disciplines and periods of culture, category of business, and stretches of time, bring in a human truth from literature to make a point in a strategy meeting, or help my team kill it in trivia.

I like process and it’s the one time I am happy to do both tried-and-true habits and step into the unknown. In both writing and strategy, my teachers have said, go fast in the beginning, burn through all your first ideas, first drafts, first hunches. Some of them will feel hot, because you know there’s something there. But don’t be precious, start with quantity, fifty ideas, a hundred first thoughts, a thousand words, because the real work is ruthless editing, selecting, connecting.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

A big fear is that if making art becomes my livelihood, it will no longer be something I love. Even the modest amount of professionalizing I’ve done as a writer (applying to fellowships, workshops, submitting writing to journals) has caused me both elation and stress, makes me feel proud and resentful. The need to credentialize myself as a writer was a big surprise, though that says more about my naïveté. I haven’t resolved my feelings about it, and the outlook is tough even for well-established writers. This historical moment and its economic structures is hostile to art and artists, so just making art at all feels good, like I am defending my own mind against forces much bigger than me. Every person who makes art is stubbornly creating the next world.

Contact Info:

• Twitter: @elliswkim

Image Credits

Graphic recording for client workshop screenshot: Giselle Chow