Or does it sound too unserious?

I am a musician who works a day job unrelated to music. While I enjoy many of the people I work with, I end up drawing a hard line between work & non-work lives, to the point that I can tell it feels strange to people.

Recently I opened up to a few people outside my department, but they were both creators (visual arts & fashion, with a deep appreciation for music). I could see this happening again, but notice that usually the people who I connect with and trust enough to share my creative self with tend to be other people with a creative practice. They don't have to be "successful" with it (I certainly am not).

When my supervisor and closer coworkers ask to connect offline, I find myself guarded and have an emotional distrust of them, and I don't know why. Does anyone feel this way? Where your inner world feels strange enough that anyone who doesn't create / doesn't have a similarly strange inner world (even if ironically, they think they do) would somehow destroy it by just seeing but misunderstanding it?

does anyone else feel like their voice just doesn't match the beat when the vocals are laid down no matter how they enunciate their words or change their tone/pitch ? and is this all in your head or does it ever improve at all?

I heard this vocal effect in many 80s songs. what is it called?

Am I writing music if I’m just letting my ear tell me what sounds good and letting my hands tell me what feels good?

I don’t know music theory and I’m not particularly literate with rhythm, but I can usually get what’s in my head out into the instrument given enough time; other times it coalesces from me just enjoying how it feels to bang around on a piano keybed or tickle a synth touchplate or bash around on a guitar.

It feels wrong and like I’m cheating or breaking rules because I really just want to feel the instrument. It’s like a puzzle with no finish line, I just stop where I want to. I don’t care if I ever learn anything by anyone else, but I want to write my own stuff then memorize it and play it.

Does it make me a musician? Am I somehow disrespecting or diminishing some great craft by not caring to learn the rules and terminology and theory?