![[pathfinding.png]] Going to a technical university marked the beginning of my mild, imposter-syndrome-flavored dissociation. For the next few years, I often felt like a fraud - someone only pretending to be “technical”. I’ve always been drawn to computers and tech, but I wasn’t a math prodigy or a geek. I just liked playing games. And if that meant diving into a troubleshooting rabbit hole to fix an obscure problem that blocked me from playing – so be it. I never felt the need to really pick things apart or get into the nitty-gritty. Nope. Just get me back to my Counter-Strike 1.6, please. When I was a kid, I had a friend who was into two things: games and trains. But unlike me, he didn’t just play - he tweaked. He messed with game files, modded things, and poked around in system folders. He was a computer tinkerer who became a train engineer later on - the most natural career path ever taken. I, on the other hand, created a pre-puberty gaming news outlet with a YouTube channel, back when videos on YouTube were transmitted in b&w (at least that's how I remember it). I wanted to talk about games, make people care about them as much as I do. That contrast stuck with me. At university, I met the actual prodigies – the ones who seemed to eat low-level C++ for breakfast. I wasn’t one of them. And in trying to become one, I felt like I had to leave behind the part of me I loved – the side that wrote, expressed, told stories. I wanted to make space for a “technical” identity I didn’t fully believe in. I figured, since I barely got into a CS-adjacent degree (Systems Engineering – which I never actually finished, btw), it's my one shot at a decent future. But when my first programming classes left me staring blankly at a broken Fibonacci sequence in MATLAB, it felt like a confirmation that I didn’t belong. Fortunately, I've been served a good ol' bowl of luck that seemingly only happens in movies as a plot device. A couple of times, walking home from uni, I bumped into a classmate I clicked with. Turned out he was not only a total sweetheart but was already working as a developer. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, he took me under his wing and started helping me with the basics. Eventually, he recommended me to his employer – and just like that, I landed my first programming job. I left my part-time gig as an editor at a pop-science outlet. It felt like a big shift: from writing articles to writing code. Unfortunately, coding professionally only fueled the self-doubt. It didn't help that the job was stressful as shit. No wonder I got fired from it after about a year. Still, during a few calmer moments, I've managed to notice something new: I enjoy coding. While not yet fully on board with the whole "technical persona", I spent the summer studying programming, not just to survive but to learn. I stopped hacking things together just to pass (just kidding, I still do it every day). A couple of months after losing my first job, I was starting a new one at a much better company. But the wound only healed slightly: will I lose this one too? Am I actually a developer or a fluke? At that second job, I was fortunate to meet some of the most wonderful people who ever walked the face of the earth. Managing to keep up with them was the ego boost I didn’t know I needed. Every now and then, they’d remind me how far I still had to go. I was a programming infant – but one soaking up knowledge through osmosis. Then, something unexpected happened; my first signs of reintegration. I don’t even remember how it came about, but I got the chance to write technical blog posts for a dev tools company. I've made some side money on that and learned that "developers who like to write are rare". Not long after, my main employer launched a blog and started looking for contributors. I volunteered without hesitation. People enjoyed my writing, and it was brought up a lot during interviews. Eventually, a specific article written for my personal blog got me my dream job. Writing had always felt like a leftover from my “past life” - a remnant of the version of me that didn’t belong here. But now, suddenly, it was useful. Maybe even a strength. Then, it became a pattern. I remembered how much I liked presenting, explaining, storytelling – all things that once felt out of place in my idea of software development (which included a lot of frowning at a screen in silence). But it turns out, there’s a real demand for people who can bridge the gap between technology and people. At my current job, I do that regularly. I’m often the bridge between customers and the product. I write. I talk. I make videos. I explain. I use all the things I used to see as proof I didn’t belong – and suddenly, they are what make me good at what I do. Whenever I am asked to do something I haven't done before (which happens a lot at a startup), I welcome the challenge. I know life has been preparing me in ways I may not understand right away. I used to look at other people's paths and think I’d taken the wrong one. But the reason I didn’t recognize it was simple: it was mine - and I hadn’t walked it yet.