The Camouflage
I run a studio session every couple weeks where creative founders bring whatever they’re working on. It’s a small group. People show up with half-built things and the feelings that come with them. My partner Kristen and I hold the space.
Last week, a founder I’ll call Sam brought his project. Personalized journals for couples. Beautiful product. His name on the cover, prompts tailored to your life stage. He’d been building it for six years across a dozen different ideas before this one took.
This one took because people want it. He brought it to a conference and strangers got it immediately. His kid bought one without being asked. The system works, the printing works, the website works. People have paid.
And he can’t let anyone new see it.
He talked about the anxiety for a while. What if the confirmation email doesn’t send. What if something breaks. What if the first stranger hits a bug and that’s the impression, forever. Reasonable concerns, all of them. He’s a builder. Builders worry about the system.
But then I asked what it feels like to imagine a stranger buying this. Not what could go wrong. What it feels like.
Panic, he said. And then, almost immediately: but I know how to fix it if something breaks. I can refund them. It’s fine.
So the panic isn’t about the problem. He already has the solution. The panic is about being found. By someone he didn’t prepare for.
I’ve started calling this camouflage.
Not imposter syndrome. Not perfectionism. Those are related, but they point somewhere else. Imposter syndrome says I’m not enough. Perfectionism says the work isn’t enough. Camouflage says something different: the work is ready, I’m capable, but if you see me in a way I didn’t choose, something terrible will happen.
It’s an image control system. It runs quietly. It doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like high standards. Like caution. Like being thorough. It produces very reasonable behavior — fix the error handling, redesign the landing page, start a new feature instead of shipping. Each move makes sense. Together they build a wall between the work and the world.
And the camouflage is productive. That’s what makes it so hard to see. A creative person in camouflage doesn’t freeze. They build. They improve. They start new things. They feel busy and competent, because they are. The creative engine just points itself away from the one act that would require standing in the open.
We spend years starting things. And then the one that sticks — the one people actually want — arrives, and we discover that success isn’t the end of the fear. It’s a different kind. Not failure. Visibility. Being seen, ongoing, by people who didn’t already love us before they found the work.
We know how to make things. We know how to solve problems. We don’t know how to stand behind something beautiful and let a stranger encounter it on their terms.
I recognized Sam because I do this.
I run a school for creative founders. I work with people every week and something real happens in those rooms. And I have spent months unable to figure out how to be visible about it. Because being visible means someone I don’t know forms an impression of me that I didn’t curate.
I protect my image. I said that out loud recently and it surprised me. Not “I get nervous about marketing.” I protect my image. It’s a system. It’s been running since I was a kid moving from place to place, learning to be whoever the room needed. If you can’t see the real one, you can’t hurt him.
It worked. It still works. And now the project needs me to stand behind it without the costume, and the costume doesn’t want to come off.
What I told Sam — and what I’m telling myself — is that the anxiety at the threshold is excitement holding its breath. The same creative intensity that built the thing is the intensity that surges when the thing wants to go out. Our nervous systems don’t distinguish between “I’m making something beautiful” and “I’m about to be seen.” The energy just moves.
The camouflage doesn’t come off in one act. It comes off in small exposures. One stranger buys the journal. One person you didn’t expect reads the post. One session gets shared beyond the safe circle. Each time, the thing we were protecting ourselves from doesn’t happen. And the system learns, slowly, that being seen is survivable.
Sam’s wife said it simply in the session: it’s enough. The product is enough. You’re enough. I watched something in him settle. Not resolve. Settle. Like a body that’s been braced finally letting its weight rest.
The work is ready. It’s been ready. We’re the ones still perfecting the camouflage.