I have teenagers. I hear about how much I suck on a regular basis.
But when my teenagers tell me I suck, it’s usually for something I’m pretty proud of: making them eat vegetables, do homework, save up their own money to buy something rather than buying it for them, ad parental nauseum.
The problem is, it isn’t usually the teenagers that have my ear.
Imposter syndrome is a helluva thing.
Imposter syndrome is what they call the feeling that you don’t belong or deserve the things you have. That your social status, your job, and anything else you have is completely and unequivocally unearned.
The feeling that you don’t deserve it.
That if the rest of the world only knew, they’d call you out as a fraud.
What if they knew that I pass off feelings and intuition for facts, like constantly. (You now know this, so read on with a critical eye.)
What if they knew I was a hick from nowhere. (Palouse region nowhere, thank you!)
That my “knowledge” was all off-hand bullshit I got from having not enough to do, and mostly came from being too lazy to get up from the computer.
Some say the best way to deal with imposter syndrome is to remember your empathy. That ALL people have similar self-doubts.
Frankly, it has never been a comfort for me to know that.
That only way I know how to combat imposter syndrome is to admit what I don’t do well, and hold myself to task on it. To shit, or get off the pot. Decide the priority on fixing it, and then get busy fixing it, or let it be.
Fundamentally, it comes down to giving myself permission. It’s perfectly acceptable to suck at some things. But the things I don’t want to suck at, I’ll work to improve.
A peach is a terrible apple, but both make wonderful pie.
In that vein of holding myself accountable, here’s a list of things I suck at.
I have a degree in English, with a concentration in creative writing from Western Washington University. With said degree, I have published nearly nothing. I don’t even blog all that often.
I still have pages I wrote twenty years ago. I recently read some, and it all sucked. It was preachy and self-important and one time, rather than using the world “mental” to describe a process happening in the mind, I made up a word.
“Mindic”.
In my word processor, there’s a red squiggly line that shows me that even my personal dictionary doesn’t include “Mindic” quite yet.
In tech, I suck at just about everything. Nearly all networking stuff. Kubernetes. Go and Ruby. Most programming languages that aren’t in my standard wheelhouse. Certificates. A lot of security stuff. Game development.
I do CrossFit five times a week, and after three years of doing it, I still suck at the following: double-unders, a pull up without a band, running faster than a 10 minute mile, Turkish Getups, Snatches, and pistols.
I am not a great boss. I’ve had many people report to me, and only a scant few of them are happy for it. Most simply tolerated it. Some had marked contempt for it.
I have 2 guitars that my uncle custom-made. I still can’t play anything beyond Mother from Danzig, or a slow version of Blind Melon’s No Rain.
I suck at cars, beyond checking the oil.
My wife rechecks the dishes after I wash them, to make sure they’re clean.
I’ve been told I need better aim in the bathroom.
See, the thing is, even after writing all that stuff out, it really isn’t all that bad. It ain’t my best work, but it’s honest.
If my boss (Hi Brian!) reads this blog and notices I’m not great at Kubernetes, well, I can work on that.
If my wife reads this and notices how the bathroom and dishes stuff was relegated to the bottom of the list, I’m sorry, and I’m working on it.
If my teenagers read this: Get back to your freaking homework! Eat more vegetables! And for the love of god stop begging for things and save up your allowance if you need it so damned much!
Photo Credit: Bobby McKay from Flickr
Used with permissions from the Creative Commons License 2.0
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