I've often found that it's easy to let self doubt creep into your life and that it can come from any area of life. It can come from your career in forms like "Am I good enough or a hard enough worker?", relationships in the form of "Do they really like me? Are they happy with me? , and in other areas of life as well. I've always been someone who has been super passionate about technology. To me, the world of servers, datacenters, code, software, and networks has always been like adult versions of Legos with me thinking if only I could have the funds to build a cool datacenter that I control and could have fun with . Part of that passion has always come with the eternal desire to learn everything I can about all of those areas of technology, a feat impossible with how rapidly things change. That desire to learn has kept me continually trying to expand my knowledge base but I pride myself on being the person smart enough to admit they haven't even come close to learning all there is about any of those areas of technology. At times that education doesn't always come easily, especially when learning on one's own as I often do in my technological hobbies. So what does this even have to do with self doubt?

As we come across struggles in learning a new concept or the next big thing for us on our continual education roadmap its then when we can find ourselves sometimes asking "Am I smart enough to understand this?" or having the feelings of Imposter Syndrome. I struggle with it at times (there are also other reasons I do as well buried within my personality, no doubt) as I'm sure so do others as well. But I've recently been sort of mentoring someone who is just starting out on their programming skill set or "adventure" if you will. His class has started him out with beginning Javascript (with variables, data structures, loops, etc) and has over the last months brought him into the world of event listeners, web design (HTML, CSS), application programming interface (API) design and coding, and into the frameworks such as React (which admittedly I have heard of and read a bit about, but never actually worked with myself).

Originally I offered to tutor him (mind you tutor, not give the answers too. There's plenty on the internet for that). But to steer him in the direction to discover the answers on his own. I did so because I thought back to what it was like when I first started out (which I think in some ways was a bit smoother than the ring of fire he's gone through which is much faster paced and essentially doing what spanned semesters in school for me in a manner of months). I thought back to doing loops in Java, user interface (UI) design in Java with event listeners, data structure design in C++ and remembered how hard it was to learn and how if I had someone to steer me (not give me answers) I could have learned it faster or understood it more completely (back then anyway). As he's progressed there's areas I find I'm proficient in and areas I had never taught myself yet (such as React) and in having to learn React to help steer him towards his own understanding, I've accomplished what I enjoy (learning as much as I can in technology).

When I reflect on my own skill set and realize that when I sit down and let's say, design an intricate distributed web app / programming project as a hobby, and encounter the struggles that I do and have that self-doubt kick in and then find myself tutoring this person and see the struggles they've gone through I realize how easy it is to tear ourselves down and get inside of our own heads which is especially true when you spend plenty of time teaching yourself things and not being in a school setting with others. That setting is where I've found that I'm (usually better at operating in throughout my career and in my own hobbies) I think the world of technology is so vast and fathoms deep in all the different areas there are such as software development, infrastructure, networking, computer security, hardware, computer repair that I think the world of tech and everyone in it, is uniquely prone to this affliction of Imposter Syndrome and asking ourselves if we "really are that competent?". I'd imagine that the world of tech and computing is rivaled in that regard only by the other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) areas. Not to mention the gender differential for women in STEM, or even other factors that can exacerbate that feeling but that's obviously thoughts and topics that are far beyond what I'm posting about here

So in summary, I think whenever I'm struggling to understand whatever my latest thing is that I need to begin pausing for a moment and reflect on how far I have come in my own journey, such as I have with tutoring this person. I feel as though I don't do so often enough. If you're reading this and have found yourself in a rut of always pushing forward but never looking back (no matter what it's in, a tech career, your love life, or life in general) , I urge you to reflect on your past accomplishments and how far you've come to become who you are now.