The Neil story, with additional footnote (2017)

There's a corollary to this imposter syndrome phenomenon that I have always found very useful to me, especially when I find myself inflicted by it, sitting in front of a computer - not knowing whats going on or how to fix something: "if it involves a computer, a human was involved on the other side - and if they could understand it, so can I. I just need to think like they do."

I suppose this is, as applicable to any technology really, just that my personal experience has always been that adopting this mindset with some thorny computer problem has, almost immediately, dissolved the imposter syndrome and replaced it with a student syndrome. And when you think about it, being a wilful and mindful student is how you get out of a lot of these kinds of situations ..

I like to think that no one knows my failures better than me. So it’s natural that I’ll think I did worse than I actually did.

Many times I’ve thought I completely fucked it up because I had a plan to do something and I was only able to accomplish 5% of what I wanted. And then others share that they were only expecting 1% or something like that.

Imposter syndrome is real, but I also have to be careful with attributing to imposter syndrome what is actually sucking. I have an area of expertise that I want to keep growing and I need to find ways to get constant checks to see how I’m doing otherwise I’ll just worry and wonder forever.

It also helps that I’ve had similar experiences to this story where people I really respected and thought knew everything shared their weaknesses and revealed others that they felt the same about.

It’s comforting how much in common people have.

This is really inspiring. Made me think of a couple things. Not really sure if this is the right spot, but just in case...

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

The universe makes room for you when you're born, long before your self-awareness and ego develops. Society makes room for you once you can be boxed, filed and categorized, once your "truth" can be domesticated and a watered-down caricaturization of it accepted as self-evident.

How to stay focused when "success" is authoritatively measured by a yardstick of abject stupidity, then?

If you can find your own unique way to disappear into the Nakatomi space (https://bldgblog.com/2010/01/nakatomi-space/, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1265944) of how society internalizes a given subject (which is not necessarily the same thing as the Nakatomi space of the subject itself), you can gain awareness of the intrinsics connecting personal experience with social representation, and learn to project "truth" that is perspective-corrected for however you want society to react to it ("enlightenment").

IMHO, winning is using this trick to make yourself appear utterly forgettable/boring while you carve out all the room you'll ever want to play in, find yourself and fulfillment, and do amazing things. As the penultimate fitness-function competition, I think the level of focus required to achieve this is categorically not something that can be learned; it is absolutely intrinsic. ("Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." - Michelangelo)

This strategy potentially has downsides though. In order for perspective-correction to have any effect, it must necessarily be an incredibly strong "inverse" caricature, and there's the risk of it taking on a gravitational field of its own, which might have an impact on perceptive folks. I might have completely gotten the wrong take from https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1120303975964774400, but looking at the sentiment from a specific angle and squinting a bit, I've been wondering for a while now...

Just that short text I think "proves" how good a writer Neil Gaiman is.

In Germany's google Neil Diamond is the #1 Neil, then the austronaut. On the 2nd page Neil Patrick Harris, Neil Patel, Neil Young, Neil Cummins Elementary School and long time no writer.