Similar to
Maslow's Hierarchy
of Needs, I can recount going through stages with different levels of intimidation when confronting software. In the beginning, any thought of
code
intimidated me. Any mention of apps, the command line, or even
HTML
websites struck the feeling of imposterhood deep into me.
Excitement
It wasn't all bad though. The positive side of this
fear
was excitement. I got excited about all the cool things that I or someone I knew could build one day. Of course having too much excitement in your life isn't sustainable, especially if you want to go deep on something and learn it. I remember at this time, even going onto
Github
was scary. Opening up
Sublime Text
and seeing the variable names color coded automatically by the text editor gave me chills. I concurrently felt like a
phony
and a
badass
.
I admit that in a way, I knew that the road ahead was going to be long. And deep down I believe I don't think I had confidence in myself to stick onto it. I'd never stuck with anything in my life. Why would this be any different.
So it makes sense why the
Old Abe
would rather stick around in this phase for as long as possible. But sticking around in the phase of excitement arrested my learning. If you're getting into learning anything that takes a long time, I advise you to get out of the excitement stage as quick as you can.
