I have a psychosis. I know what you are guys are saying, “You think you have JUST one?!?” No probably not, but I’ll have to ask the others that are in my head with me.
Anyway, generally I am a pretty self confident person. I don’t have trouble with large groups of people, I have no trouble making jokes, no matter how tasteless, with people, I think I make friends easily and I hold deep friendships quite dear. So I cannot figure out why I have the troubles that I am about to relate, perhaps because I am always attempting to be the best at what I do, or perhaps it is just a fault in me. Like the old commercial used to say, “You make the call.”
I have a pretty large set of knowledge about computers, networks, hardware, operating systems, and a lot of other stuff. There are a lot of people that defer to me when talking about stuff and I am around. All this is great and does wonders for my confidence, but whenever I am around fellow geeks I have the horrible time that I think they know more than me and it drives me nuts. Even if it is just a little bit of info, or something I have no reason to know or chance to know. It still drives me crazy.
You may be one of my friends and sitting there thinking that I am not talking about our connection, well you are wrong. There is no friend that I have that I know in a computer situation where I have not had this problem with them. It has nothing to do with you, just me. I think that is why I seem so eager to learn what you know, because I am always in the back of my head thinking that this person gets away from me and starts laughing their ass off that I don’t know whatever it is that we were talking about.
I love my job. I love everything about my job and all the stuff I do there, and therefore it seems so odd that I would become worried when I have to tell people what all I work with, because I don’t get to work with all the stuff that other people do. I worry that they look at me as a loser because I don’t work in a fully fiber building with servers that have 8 disk arrays in them. Are you less of a “winner” if you have never had a job that lets you play with twenty thousand dollar servers? Am I more of a beta geek, because I don’t operate advanced multi bladed cisco routers? I have never taken a class that really taught me much about anything I do. It is all self learned and gained via work, interests, desire, and friends. I know more about stuff than people that have had several classes and certifications, yet still when I am in a conversation with these people I feel I am being put down in their mind. In my logic mind I know that such is not the case. These are great friends of mine which I hold in high regard and I believe the feeling is mutual, but in the sub mind the thoughts still run rampant on my psyche.
If there is such a thing as an alpha geek (and I truly believe there is) then I think this is what my problem is. Scientific theory states that in most environments there exists an alpha male and several others that strive to unseat him in that role. In nature the alpha male receives first pick of the females. In the Geek world I would say that it is most definitely not the situation, but what does the alpha male receive? Why is it such a boon to be one? This is a question that I cannot seem to answer. Perhaps my “pocket psychiatry” is not advanced enough to sort this out. Maybe there isn’t anything at all, but nature still demands that this activity is enforced. Honestly I don’t know, but I think that is what my problem is.
Again I am not talking about anything that is wrong with my friends only with my head.