On feeling dumb, learning, and other existential crises.

I'm ending the year on a bit of a funny note: feeling like a moron.

This happens to me periodically, and while it isn't comfortable, I've come to really appreciate times where I feel like this, since they give me the inertia I need to keep on learning and growing.

There isn't one particular thing that brought it on, more like a whole series of events where I felt very smoothbrained each time, and my personal time weighted average has tipped me into just feeling like a moron compared to everyone else in the room

(spoiler alert: I probably am, it's a bunch of really smart rooms, and tbh, I wouldn’t have it any other way - I wholly endorse searching for places where you’re the dumbest person in the room on the topic)

This all makes me reflect on the strange ways people learn - I know for me I go probably go at least 10x faster if I have a partner, someone I can think out loud with and who helps catch the inevitable mistakes, or being able to just hang out and watch someone who knows what they're doing, which I think works even better, just I almost entirely don’t see this as a thing.

For example: I was a bit overwhelmed by the EIP process, but then lightclient started doing these sessions where you could watch him just do EIP editing, and it took me a couple of months, but now I'm beginner-comfortable with it, and have contributed some editing and even some ERCs.

Just being able to watch him go through the motions was huge.

I feel like people don't like teaching this way, and I admit that having a pleb on your coattails can slow you down, but every now and then I wonder if I could just hang out with someone doing advanced math (for example) if it would work better for me than my misadventures in the academic system. tbh, I’m not sure very many people out there like learning this way either.

I dunno what it is about me, if I see you do it a bunch of times and am allowed to ask the same stupid question that didn't sink in the first three times you answered it, I find that after spending a bit of time at y=0, I can start picking up quick. I guess if I’d completely nerd out about it, I kinda feel like most people’s learning curves are more linear than mine. When I’m feeling better about myself I like to think that once the curve kicks in for me I go pretty quickly, but in a space where every time Dave White makes a tweet someone implements it within a few hours, I kinda feel like that would be misplaced hubris rn.

It's like I need ridealongs or something, I dunno, but apprenticeship just doesn't seem to be a thing anymore (at least in the fields and interests I’ve got).

Another issue is that I'm interested in like a million things at any given moment, makes it easier to give up when there's 1000 more things to try at any given moment. Getting better at defi, assembly, rust, keeping up fullstack skills, non-EVM chains, tons of tools and platforms specifically, it's hard to pick a line and focus on it, really put in through thick and thin, unless I have some kind of job dictating it. (I'm fine when I have a job that dictates it, btw, I just kinda get nuked when the field is open and I have to decide.)

There’s so much awesome stuff out there to learn, so many awesome people out there killing it in each one, I guess I’m just pulled in too many directions and just get torn apart.

Strangely, one of the things that I think makes these times bearable as opposed to flat out rekking me is how many times I’ve been told before that I couldn’t make it. I have a collection of those. I’ve been told it was helpless for me to teach myself how to code at all, for example, or at least to get a job in it, by someone who places beginners in coding jobs for a living. Twice. Once when I first got started, and then, a couple of years later, a number of people I knew who all recommended this person nudged me to try again since I was more experienced by then.

I suspect this would be true for anyone - once you survive enough of your own obituaries, having a setback like feeling stupid isn’t catastrophic anymore, and the humility can even be welcomed. I’m used to feeling like I’m behind, and can even enjoy the challenge of breaking through to a new level of skill or understanding. I don’t even think it’s a competitive thing, I don’t enjoy going back to them and showing them they were wrong. It’s more like proving it to myself.

I don’t really do resolutions, predictions, or goals for new years. The world is too chaotic for it, imho, and I’d rather adapt to what comes than be stuck looking at goalposts that I don’t really think are relevant anymore. I’m not even sure if I can grok what the really important things that happened this past year are yet - it’s still too soon.

(Incidentally, this is completely unrelated, but it’s bothered me that things like the Oscars are held for content from the same year. People wonder how they missed major groundbreaking and generationally important films, but it seems clear, at least to me, that it’s because it was too early to tell. I keep on wondering how different the choices would be if, for example, the Oscars held this year judged films from 5 or 10 years ago.)

So, what does next year hold? Other than inversebrah inevitably revealing that he’s actually Elizabeth Warren, I hope it at least finds me a smarter and more talented person at the end of it than the beginning of it, and I’d certainly like to believe that there’s a good chance it will.

Y’all amazing, it’s hard to even imagine spending my day anywhere else in the codingsphere, see you in 2022.