Databases and Calculators

I want to be an expert at something. Anything, really. I see people who know everything (there or thereabouts) there is to know about something and wonder what it's like. Where they're totally confident in their abilities. 

Maybe that's my problem - I have the ability, just not the confidence to go with it? 

No. I don't have the ability which is why I have no confidence in my abilities. Or at least, my confidence level is actually on par with my skill level. 

There's something called 'Impostor Syndrome'. Probably obvious immediately what it means. People that feel like impostors in their own chosen field. I would say I have Impostor Syndrome if my belief that I'm an impostor, was at odds with my skill level. 

But it's not paranoia when they're really after you. It's not Impostor Syndrome when you really are an impostor.

This has been bugging me (to say it nicely) for years. I feel like I've picked the wrong career. Always have. Where my colleagues have always had this uncanny ability to actually figure things out, using logic and science (in some small way), I've always seen myself as more of a database. I remember what it was that fixed something in the past, so if it happens again, I know what worked last time. These other people, these 'calculators' are able to actually work it out. Which is infinitely more impressive and ultimately more useful than just being able to remember the last fix. How do I ever find out what the fix is to a new problem? I go to a calculator. 

I've always relied on these calculators for my continued career success and progression. This hasn't been something that I have done consciously or maliciously - I'm just thinking about this now.

But what happens when you find yourself in a job where the solution to these problems requires a calculator to be able to remember?? When the sheer multitude of issues and the complexity of them isn't something where you can just remember what the fix was. Because it's different every time or the ones that are the same only happen a few times a year. You have to become a calculator. You have to learn "stuff".

This theory or state of mind, whatever you want to call it is obviously inherently flawed.

I obviously know something about computers, right? 

Yeah of course I do. I know how to use one, and I know what tends to go wrong and what tends to fix it. I don't know why these things go wrong or why the fix works, just that it does. I have a rough understanding of the way programs operate and how they communicate with each other and the operating system from using them so much when I was younger. 

For no other reason than that - because I used them a lot when i was younger - usually to play Age of Empires or Settlers III. 

Sometimes the games would crash and I'd have to trawl the Internet for a solution, which itself gave me experience of the Internet and browsers etc. Sometimes I would want to make the computer a bit more personal to me and customise the way it looks and performs which gave me experience with working with the operating system. After years of this, they became second nature - but only at the user level. I am an expert user. 

Great - so is everyone else. 

At my first IT job I was part of a team and would generally piggy back on the minds of the calculators for things that I hadn't already come across in my personal life. Then my second job there was no team - it was just me. So nobody else to help me and nobody else to ask when I don't know something (which is a lot). My job was basically to free up the users time when they have an issue by searching Google for the answer myself instead of them doing it (and having the permission to actually implement the fix when necessary). Then, if those problems came back, I would remember the fix. But I could very rarely figure it out for myself. I could never 'calculate' what the fix was. I suppose I started to be able to do that to a very small extent as my experience grew but not much. I've NEVER been a 'go-to-guy' for anything. 

Never an expert.

None of that has ever really bothered me though. Yeah I wished I was smarter, but so does everybody, right? 

Who cares, I'm successful. 

Problem is when you stop being successful. When you find yourself in a job where the demands on your mental capacity and attention to detail are more than you've ever been used to. 

When you don't have Google. 

The job I'm in now though isn't as simple as that. It uses a technology that nobody else in the country (and in most of the world) uses, so nothing is on Google. Ever. In all my previous jobs, I've never needed to learn anything. Not properly. If someone would explain something to me, it would be easy to figure out because I always had the foundational knowledge to understand what they were talking about - we were pretty much always on an even keel. 

The job I'm in now however is different. 

I've joined a department where everybody else in it (until very recently) grew up in the company. The were promoted to those positions through being able to demonstrate time and again their skill and knowledge in the area. I managed to bluff an interview (because I've had a ton of them). I'm in now, but I didn't grow up there. 

I don't know what they think I know (although it's becoming more apparent how much I do actually know as time goes on and I keep ducking and diving through the issues). 

So what, I'll move on again? 

Nope, not as easy as that because I'm on double the pay and there's no way I would be able to be happy on a drastically lower wage, meaning I would have to go somewhere even more advanced. So I stay. Because I'm stuck. 

So I'll just keep ducking and diving, right? 

Wrong again - I'm also on call (right now as it happens) every 3 weeks. Meaning I'm now on my own, in the middle of the night. No Google, no support (I cant keep calling other people that are asleep because I still don't know what I'm doing). I have a team of people waiting to find out from me what is wrong, waiting for my go ahead, waiting for me to fix everything because nobody in the West Midlands is able to dial 999 right now until I fix it, because that's what I'm supposed to do. That's what my team does - we're the guys you go to when nobody else knows whats wrong. We're Core Technical Support Specialists. Specialists.So what would you do? Would you do the same as me and let the pressure get to you and cry in frustration in the middle of the night, stalling? Not knowing whats wrong and not knowing what to do? Who to call? Where to start? How could you do anything else?

So, all of this has been getting to me and causing me to question why I'm having such a problem. I'm not a dumb person. I can surely figure this out - I mean, my colleagues are actually telling me what the fix is and trying to explain to me what the issues are. So I decide that actually, this place is going to require me to be a calculator. 

No piggybacking here. 

So I arm myself with a notepad and pen and start asking questions (as awkward as it is to have been here nearly 3 years (by that point) and asking day one questions again). But I find that no matter how much people tell me things, I cant remember them later on? I was listening, but for some reason when the issue reappears, I just don't know how to fix it, or where to start? This starts frustrating not only me, but those who have already told me 4 times. I was listening, I know I was. So this time, I really concentrate. Build up a picture in your head. Internalise it. Make it something you don't have to remember, but something you know. Something you understand. So they talk, and as time goes on, I start to wonder if I am actually listening? These people are talking to me, using words I understand, but I don't think I'm listening? Then I start trying to figure out what I mean by 'listening'? I mean, I'm sitting here. Inches away from them. I have no phone in my hand. I'm looking right at them, they're looking at me and talking. I'm hearing them, and i understand the words (in as much as I'm fluent in English), but am I listening? 

I'm not even sure i know what listening means anymore since what I thought was listening, might not be? 

So now I find myself thinking 'how do I listen to someone?'. Does it help where I'm looking? should I be repeating the words they say in my head? Does that help? Should I be creating visual representations in my head of what they're saying? The other issue is that I'm asking myself all these question while the person is still talking to me. So, shut up, listen to what he's saying (I say to myself while he's still talking). So I listen. But now that I don't know how to listen anymore, I cant. I just spend the time 'trying to figure out what it means to listen to someone'.

That's not normal. I know that's not normal. 

Combined with everything else - constantly being late for no reason other than I took too long getting ready even though I had my eye on the time or waking up early so I end up spending more time on my phone even though I know I need to get off it now and I end up late again - constantly forgetting that we're due to be in a meeting so I'm constantly worried if people are missing from the desk because it might be that they're in a meeting I'm supposed to be in, which is pointless because when I'm in the meeting I'm not 'listening' (whatever that means) to a word of whats being said - remembering what it was like to be a soldier and how crap I was at it - remembering what I was like as a kid and remembering that my family said on a few separate occasions that I must have ADHD, I thought I should probably go find out.

Got diagnosed as ADHD Combined. Can't be bothered to write anymore. Will write more at some other time. 

A bit anticlimactic I know, but it's not my fault you read all this vomit.