I’ve Been Lip Syncing, and I want to Sing
When I started getting into the technology and business community, I began to follow Hacker News quite religiously. Even as I built small side projects, I looked with wide eyes at the “Show Hacker News” posts hoping that I would one day be able to reach the Hacker News front page.
Over the years, even as my career goals and portfolio had changed over time, I never did alter my habit of perusing the front pages of feeds like Hacker News, Product Hunt and TechCrunch. I would tell people, and myself, that it helped me keep abreast of the current trends, knowledgeable about major events, and inspired by the flood of new input. Even though these benefits were very real and tangible, there was another reason that I did not at that time realize and I am slightly embarrassed currently to share.
Being a READER of the latest news and trends made me feel like an ACTIVE MEMBER of those news and trends. It made me feel like a part of this community of makers and doers, and it was glorious. Especially when considering that as simply a reader, I had to put in a minuscule fraction of the work the real achievers did to feel like one of them.
Without striving and achieving like the ones I read about, I was able to feel like their peer.
That is not to say I did nothing, that I achieved nothing. I built small side projects, some of which I am very proud of; I worked as a successful PM at Microsoft before I quit right after a promotion to build a startup in Silicon Valley; I learned about new technologies and build small proof-of-concept projects to understand certain frameworks that stood out to me.
But compared to those rockstars I aspire to and admire, I’ve simply been lip-syncing this entire time. You’ve lip synced to songs before, right? Maybe even sung along to some songs thinking you’re hitting the same notes as Taylor Swift in Love Story or Justin Timberlake in Sexy Back? (Okay, my pop culture references are dated, but you get my point.) If you haven’t already experienced this, try it the next time you’re singing along to your favorite band. As you’re singing to the music blasting out of the car stereo or your wireless Ear Pods, press that pause that button and keep singing. If you’re not actually an amazing singer, you might get the same feeling I did: discomfort, lack of confidence, and a nagging insistence in your head to stop this preposterous exercise.
The comfort of lip syncing was recently peeled back for me when I discovered tried to stand up production-level internet software on my own. Outside of the local development environment, outside of the warm and fuzzy firewall that I call home, outside of the security and support of the Microsoft infrastructure and income, I got a full blast of the feeling of the impostor syndrome, except at this point… I’m not sure if it’s just the syndrome.
Just as I had the sudden realization years earlier that I was not actually pitch-perfect like Lea Michele, that I lacked the vocal range of Adele and that I couldn’t actually rap the beats like B.o.B., I had a face-slap of a realization that I’m not on the same trajectory as the stars in the technology world either.
As a teenager, I chose not to fight a battle with my vocal chords which I knew I surely would not win, but for the current Jeff, this is a marathon I’m going to finish, even if I already know there will be more to run after the finish line.
Hello, open source community! Hello, makers and doers. Hello, crazy ones. Hello, movers and achievers. Hello, world. I’m coming to join your ranks.
Here’s my most recent public project and the only one that I’m proud of showing to the public: Hex 2048. Keep a look out for me, and advice, feedback and mentorship are all appreciated.
You can find me on Twitter @therealjeffhou or via email at jeffhou@jeffhou.com.
