Tech | We’re All Just Trying to Figure It Out

This might be one of my fav photos I’ve ever taken. I love it. Snapped with iPhone on a whim while leaving my sisters place. It brings back memories, nostalgia, I’m not even certain what exactly, just old times.

Found the quote below over the weekend and it resonated with me. I’ve been reading here and there about impostor syndrome, the inability to unable to internalize accomplishments. When you feel like someone is going ‘figure you out’, realize you don’t know what you’re doing, see right through your whole charade. ‘Impostor Syndrome is the domain of the high achiever. Those who set the bar low are rarely it’s victim’ (Forbes).

— CASIE STEWART November 24, 2014

It’s ok to not know what you’re doing, We’re all trying to figure it out as we go. I used to get severe anxiety before going to events, being on stage, speaking. It’s not that people wouldn’t like me, it’s that they would, and sometimes I didn’t know exactly what I was doing but I was going on experience, and making it up as I go. Being in the world of social media before it was a business (or industry!) has taught me to realx and roll with it. Preparation, constant innovation, and trying new things has kept me ahead, made me a ‘pioneer’. (It always weirds me out when someone calls me that, the thought of ME being part of the start of something.)

A photo posted by C A S I E S T E W A R T (@casiestewart) on Nov 11, 2014 at 3:17pm PST

So I got to thinking about blogs and authenticity and why people even blog these days, and I thought about why they started. A blog, formerly WebLog was a place for non-tecnical users of the WWW to write about and discuss a topic.

A blog (a truncation of the expression weblog)^[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single individual^[citation], occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject.

The whole world of blogging has changed so much. It’s like people blog for the things, the invites. I roll my eyes when someone’s feed is contest, after contest, shilling competing brands. It looks cheap. Once I spoke at a conference with a girl who had 50k Instagram followers but she hardly gets 20 likes per photo. The worst is when you’re following someone and think, ‘wow they’re doing great’ then the next day they gain 10K in followers out of nowhere, it’s like all they care about is how to get instagram followers. Social media and blogging are built on reputation, one sure way to 1) lose all credibility, and 2) look like a narcissistic idiot is to buy a bunch of followers. There’s even services you can subscribe to now that will give you X amount of likes per photo for a monthly service fee. It’s not hard to see through. Kinda makes it all seem so blah.

I started my blog as a way to keep more memories about people, places, things, and thoughts. I’ve become addicted to documenting and if I don’t write things down, I’m afraid I’ll forget. Twitter has been really great for keeping memories, also Google. From my research on Impostor Syndrome, it’s quite common in successful women. If you ever feel the anxiety creeping over you, couple good reads below.

• How To Stop Feeling Like A Fraud
• Why Confidence Is A Catch-22 For Women
• How To Get Ahead By Admitting How Little You Know
• What It’s Really Like For Women In Tech

Those are my thoughts for the day. Hoping to get outside and soak up some sun. It was 15 degrees at 9am. Not bad for November, baby!

Remember, you’ll never be younger than you are today so make the most of it. 🙂

<3 CASIE