Unmasked

What if you thought you were really sure of who, of what, you are? What if you had always been sure you were a certain type of person?

What if one day you realize that quite a lot of your self concept didn’t seem true anymore? What if you looked around and didn’t recognize that person anywhere?

Who would you be then? Did that person ever exist? Was it just an act all along?

While I have struggled with imposter syndrome (which I wrote about previously) for more years than I care to remember, I’ve always considered myself a reasonably strong person. I knew I could work hard, keep moving ahead, persevere, and do the right thing.

But then I started to wonder, do I even want to be the kind of person I thought I was?

Where do you go from there? Who do you become instead?

Someone better, I hope.

Where Did I Go?

The past year brought so many changes to my life - some radical, some gradual and slow - there were several times I looked in the mirror (or, okay, took a bunch of selfies) and wasn’t sure I recognized the person looking back at me.

There were times that were beyond difficult, sad, bereft even.

All the way back to Atherton, where it started

I’ve come out the other side a stronger person - which is nice - but lately I’ve noticed another happy side effect of tearing myself down to the core and building the pieces back up; that nagging voice in the back of my head is a whole lot quieter now.

I’m not sure the imposter will ever completely go away, but he’s staying in his chair in the corner and muttering instead of shouting.

How did that happen?

Origins

So, I’ve been doing a lot of digging through my past over this last year as a way of reckoning with what’s happened, where I found myself, and where I wanted to go from there.

To my surprise, I did actually recognize the trail of events and circumstance that created the specter of the imposter – gave it mass and force. Some of these were things done to me, some things I let happen or even had a hand in doing to myself. I kept digging layer by layer, and event to event, until I found the kernel.

All the way back to my first real job nearly 30 years ago – a job I’d worked hard to get and was proud and excited to have. I was a Software Engineer and employee number 11 at Rare, Ltd.

It was an intense environment working with an enthusiastic, driven group of young programmers, artists, and designers all eager to prove our worth and create some really cool games. The Directors took full advantage of our keenness and inexperience and the work environment quickly became a frenzied contest to prove who was the hardest working and most committed to the company or project.

The Car - a Peugeot GTI – they were cool at the time…

Though we were all salaried, they made us clock our hours, and each week displayed a spreadsheet with the total worked by each Engineer - a subtle way to show who wasn’t competing aggressively enough in the burnout Olympics. I had a small starting salary, based on a normal run of hours, while actually clocking somewhere between 90-95 hours a week, putting my compensation well below minimum wage. They never failed to remind us how very lucky we were for the opportunity to work ourselves to death there.

I worked long and hard, and was clever enough, to earn one of the coveted bonuses – a company car – which was the most significant bonus they gave and another string to pull on to manipulate the team.

After a couple of years of relentless pressure, the absence of any sort of social life outside work, and a pathological lack of sleep, I asked for a meeting with my boss to talk about the team’s growing burnout and what might be done to ameliorate the churn and burn atmosphere.

Instead of meeting with me right then, he asked me to wait in a conference room down the hall. I’d sat for nearly an hour when I was startled by all six directors walking in. Assuming they had a meeting scheduled, I leapt to my feet and excused myself. They stopped me and announced they were there to meet with me.

They proceeded to spend the next couple of hours browbeating me and attempting to convince me I was resigning, because I seemed so unhappy they felt it was better if I simply left. They tried to convince me to write and sign a letter of resignation – a career suicide letter of sorts.

I refused, repeatedly.

After hours of intimidation and badgering, they had security escort me to my desk in front of everyone, confiscated the keys to my “bonus” company car, and shoved me out the door.

I was 20 years old and everything I had at that point in my life was tied to that job: money, car, friends, sense of self-worth. Just like that, they took it all and knocked me completely flat.

Rather Weighty, This

That was the inception - the moment the imposter was born and took up residence in my brain. That moment a painfully naïve kid from a little town in the middle of pastoral England, who was so excited to be part of something great, got his feet kicked out from under him. After relentless pressure, after being told that my games were never quite “great,” after so much time being made to feel like I was carrying the weight of Milton Bradley’s video game division on my shoulders (the publisher I was mostly slated to work with), they threatened, hounded, and ultimately fired me.

I’d given everything I had and the minute I tried to speak up for myself, asked to have my contributions recognized and rewarded with just a bit of understanding and a respite from the incessant drive to work harder and longer, they ambushed me, forced me out, and left me with nothing.

The moral injustice left an ugly wound.

I fought back and won a judgement for unlawful termination. I thought that was it - that I’d gotten over it and moved on. But that event distorted my perception – like looking out at the world through an old piece of glass, where the thick spots and wavy edges warp and bend everything so it’s just a bit off, though the image seems clear enough because you don’t really know any better.

Every meeting I’ve been called to in the 27 years since caused a clutch of suspicion and panic. Each invitation rousing alarm and dread, each unexpected group of attendees sparking anxiety and unease, every new boss greeted with apprehension and self-protective reserve.

I’m not bothering to write all of this down because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. I don’t feel particularly sorry for me because I have just gotten on with it all these years since, and I’m good with how my life has turned out in general. I’ve accomplished important, satisfying things, I’ve even won some awards.

But I had been bending for years under the strain of hauling the imposter around with me until I thought I’d broken from it and I really wanted to set it down.

Reintegration

I’ve built a new perspective over the past year. Among other things, I’ve discovered it’s okay to fall apart a bit - that you don’t always have to have it all together because life can be challenging. I’ve found that it can be good to tear everything apart, tear your life all the way down to the core, and take a good hard look at the pieces.

Then, you can pick out the bad ones, or find the shiny bits in the muck and polish them up.

And then you rebuild.

With compassion, care, and understanding of who you were and how you got here, you create a new concept of who you want to be. You reintegrate the pieces and make something better.

What the Rare leadership did to an eager, 20-year-old kid was cruel and wrong. I feel bad for that kid and I wish I could tell him the rest of the world isn’t this way, that every boss he’ll have isn’t waiting for him to mess up to justify humiliating and firing him. The kind of people who would do that to some eager kid are terrible human beings. The kind of people who inflict moral injustice on others, sometimes repeatedly, are horrible and they’re just about everywhere you go.

If you’re one of the people this sort of thing has happened to…it isn’t your fault. Have compassion for that naïve kid and don’t blame him or her for not being prepared to cope with the bullies, or with the careless and cruel way people willfully damage others. If you’re still carrying the burden their cruelty placed on you, get help with learning to set it down, and get back the pieces of yourself.

Level Up

When push came to shove over the last year, I felt like the unmasking I’d been fearing all those years had finally happened. Only, the guy under the mask wasn’t some bereft, lost kid. I was exposed for what I had built myself into to try and justify the stubborn sense of righteous anger and betrayal that kid felt.

While that scared, stubborn kid had kept me from fully embracing all the things that came my way, I still did a hell of a lot with the opportunities I got. Also, I realized the imposter was a way of denying my ego, a way of hiding my drive to accomplish and my satisfaction when I succeeded.

I’m happier and more confident for having gone through this past year and the sometimes painful reintegration process. That 20+ year festering wound has scarred over, and I’ve succeeded in telling the imposter to sit down and take a well-earned break.

Well then, I guess I’m ready for the next challenge.

Let’s change the world, shall we?