Conversation

Lorenzo Stoakes

Illness gets you a bit low, especially an illness that happens LITERALLY the day after you feel you finally got your shit together this year (fucking classic)...

But feel like such an imposter in every area of my life, everything, feel like it's all too little too late and all for nothing.

Who am I to contribute to mm? To write a fucking book about it? To fuck around with shitty music? To dare to try to improve my body in the gym when I'm this fat right now? Etc.

And not only in these areas... in everything...

Every time I do things I fight those feelings but they're still there, waiting, hiding...

I don't think I'll ever get over that but I also refuse to give up trying right until the end and committed to doing the things I've committed myself to doing even if I do them as the most deluded x factor contestant equivalent in each area.

I'll be the best imposter ever!
2
0
3

@ljs yes the gym thing is a little bit mysterious

1
0
2
@lkundrak guess who commanded me to do it 🍷
1
0
1

@ljs 🍷 heysatán

0
0
3
@ljs The only time I don't feel like an imposter is when I am in the midst of messing something up but good. ;-)

Best of everything with the book!
1
0
2
@paulmckrcu thanks, I mean it's slightly ridiculous that you, as a bona-fide expert, feel that way but I guess a good indicator that it's something that's just in the mind!

The main weapon I use against it is to make it irrelevant, i.e. countering, to myself, with 'well ok I'll be the best imposter I can be' :>)
1
0
2
@ljs I think of imposter syndrome as I do stage fright. It motivates me to be careful.
1
0
1
@paulmckrcu yes, it's a sign of caring too I think and admitting the field is vast, you can know only so much, and details are likely to pop in and out of your mind at all times...

It strongly motivates me to check and double check things (with small programs/pr_err() at appropriate points/gdb plugged into qemu/etc. etc.) to 'prove' them to myself and to work from first principles + the source.

Of course you still worry, even then, but it is a motivator :)
1
0
2
@ljs You can of course overdo both stage fright and imposter syndrome, for example, by being paralyzed into inactivity.
0
0
1