It does­n't mat­ter what I am do­ing, be it work, a hob­by, or just talk­ing, I have a con­stant fear, in the back­ground pro­cess­es of my mind, that I will be dis­cov­ered, that I will be found to be a hack, a fraud, a con­man.

It does­n't mat­ter if I am ac­tu­al­ly a hack at what I am do­ing at the time, or if it's some­thing I am re­al­ly good at, or if it's some­thing that's im­pos­si­ble to be a fraud at. That lit­tle voice of in­se­cu­ri­ty is there, all the time, say­ing "they'll fig­ure you out, they'll know, they'll re­al­ize you are full of crap".

I know, ra­tio­nal­ly, that I don't re­al­ly suck at most of the things I do, and those I suck at, I could do bet­ter, be­cause I al­so have this oth­er ir­ra­tional voice telling me I can do pret­ty much ev­ery­thing. I won­der if those voic­es are the same thing, or if they are like the dev­il and an­gel in my shoul­der­s.

Be­ing an in­tro­vert means I don't want to be shown as a hack, so I try to do things well, so I am not re­al­ly a hack, so I am not shown as a hack. If I am con­sis­tent­ly not a hack, I get in­sane­ly con­fi­dent that I can do stuff I re­al­ly can't do, be­cause I am a hack at those.

I speak in con­fer­ences, which for an in­tro­vert is dif­fi­cult, but since I don't want to be a hack, I try to fig­ure out how to do it, and it seems I am not bad at it, but be­fore I do it, ev­ery time, I feel like a hack, I know I should have done my slides ear­lier, I should have re­hearsed, I should know what I am go­ing to say, and I did­n't, could­n't, don't.

When­ev­er I have a prob­lem and google and see my own ear­li­er fum­blings ap­pear as re­sult­s, I won­der if that's ac­tu­al­ly the lev­el of knowl­edge out there, if ev­ery­one else is as much of a hack as I am, and I de­spair. Then I try to fig­ure things out and do it bet­ter, and prob­a­bly stop be­ing a hack for a lit­tle bit.

I am an en­gine fu­eled by in­se­cu­ri­ty and neu­ro­sis. It's ex­haust­ing. It's a lot of fun.