Only on purpose

I recognise I'll never finish reading. By the time I've read everything relevant written to date, other people will have written more. People in my field are writing RIGHT NOW. Bastards. I hate them. STOP! I need to catch up!

Is this just impostor syndrome? Do I think I need to earn the right to write by reading "enough"? Is this just self-sabotage, endlessly deferring the painful task of writing by convincing myself to read as displacement activity?

thesis. So this can't be how everyone else does it, all the other academics who write things. Are they just far more well-read than I am? Or are they misrepresenting themselves, citing things they haven't read? Or am I just inventing overly stringent rules for myself that nobody follows or expects?

or misrepresent myself as having read things I haven't. But while I'm reading I feel anxiety because I'm supposed to be writing, not reading, this isn't getting any writing done. & if I have to read a whole article or book or chapter for every sentence I write, it will take me 100 years to write a

cited it. & then I think "I can't cite that if I haven't read it" & I get the feeling that I haven't read enough to authoritatively write anything. So I stop writing and start reading the article/chapter/book so that I feel I understand it properly & won't be mispresenting it in my writing, or

Followed you because I want to read this. It's very relevant to my own work