You're More Than A Developer

You're not just a good developer.

Being a good developer isn't the reason you exist. That's why it's okay for people to disagree with you about what is the Best™️ Insert Developer Tool Here.

That's why it's okay for you to make mistakes. The only reason it wouldn't be okay to make mistakes would be if the sole purpose of your existence was to be the perfect developer. But it's not.

You are more than a developer.

You're not just a:

• developer
• student
• teacher
• manager
• employee, or parent, or...

You are not any One Thing. As soon as you define yourself as nothing but One Thing, you will experience pain whenever that fragile sense of self is challenged. It will be challenged often, because you are lying to yourself about the nature of reality.

If you define yourself as nothing besides One Thing, for example, being a good developer, you will experience pain. If you define yourself as nothing but [insert personal quality here] you are going to experience pain.

From This Is Water:

“Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.” - dfw

If you hold onto one identity for dear life, that is the thing that will leave you. What you hold onto is going to go away.

Your identity is not tied up in the tools you use or the code you write. Because I say so. Because you need this freedom to live. Because the alternative is pain.

The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.