Impostor Syndrome

Shortly before I pushed out an ebook (WordPress Plugin Support) I had a rush of panic and fear. “Why do I think I’m capable of this!?” I asked myself. “I’m not a great coder like Jorbin! I don’t know deep seated WordPress secrets like Otto! I’m not an autodidactic trac machine like Sergey! Where do I get off thinking I can write a book about plugins!?”

Then I stepped back. I wasn’t writing a book about how to write plugins or how to code, or even everything that everyone did wrong. I was writing a book about how to submit a plugin to the repository. I was writing about how to handle support, how to document, how to reply to people, and generally how to not be a pain in the ass. That’s all stuff I know damn well, and I’m good at!

So why was I scared?

Impostor syndrome is a weird idea. It’s basically feeling like you’re not worthy of the praise you get. Have you ever had someone say “Thank you!” and you replied “It was nothing.” even though it was hours of thought where you racked your brain for a long lost memory? Why didn’t you say ‘You’re welcome.’ instead? It’s because somewhere, deep down in your head, you were sure you didn’t deserve it.

Mentioning this on Twitter brought up the suggestion I write a book about impostor syndrome and how to overcome it, but the fact is I don’t know how.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know what I’m supposed to do, but I can’t do it and not feel a little bit like a fraud. I was always told ‘Write what you know!’ and that gave me the courage and confidence to hit the publish button on a lot of posts here, and my books. Certainly I wasn’t raised to not be confident, which is funnier if you know my father. I have absolute confidence in myself and my abilities. I know I can do things, but still I get scared.

Here’s what I do know. At some point in my life, I lost that ability to be certain at all times. But only when I’m alone. Before I speak at a WordCamp, any WordCamp, I am tense and stiff, not very funny, anxious, and nervous. People get a lot of crappy pictures of me that way. I told the photographer at Las Vegas “It takes a bit for me to warm up. As soon as I start talking, though, I’ll be fine.”

And this is true. Once I start doing it, I’m fine. As soon as I hit publish, the fears were gone. As soon as I did something I felt great. This is true pretty much all the time (except the one time I clearly remember thinking “Bad choice! Bad choice!” and it ended in broken bones). I know it won’t be perfect, and I know I’ll probably have to go back and fix things, but that’s alright.

What is the truth here? Am I really lying to myself at one point in this process? Do I really know nothing? Why can’t I, or anyone, just shake it. It’s not true, and I know it, that I’m incapable of things, but fear and all this stuff that’s ‘in my head’ is frustrating especially because I know it’s pretty much all in my head.

The point, and this comes back to why this is on my ‘tech’ blog and not my personal one, is that what holds us back more than anything else is ourselves. The reason I don’t code ‘as much’ with core is not because I can’t but because I still feel awkward and slow when doing so, which holds back a process which is running along so fast now, it can hardly stop to wait for me.

But instead of grumbling and giving up, I’ve been slowly, steadily, working on what I can do, making it good– no, making it great, and moving forward with that. Sometimes that develops into a patch, and sometimes it means I write a long blog post about things and what they mean to me, or how I learned them.

That’s my truth. The only way to keep fighting that impostor feeling is to ignore that inner-me telling me I’m not good enough, accept the fact that I’m probably not fast enough for the rapid development world, and just truck on keeping up and fixing what I can, when I can.

But this is my answer. It’s not going to be the same for everyone, and that’s why I can’t (yet) write a book about this. Because there is no answer for everyone, or even enough people, to make that doable. Still, know this. If you did something, if you tried something, then you did it. You tried it. No one can take that away. Not even that really annoying inner you who thinks you suck.

Because you don’t suck.