Feeling like a phony

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

I can relate to this:

If I had a dollar for every time I wondered when I was going to get fired for incompetence, I’d be a millionaire. Most of the time I know that I know my trade — I get a fairly regular stream of compliments from coworkers, customers, peers on random projects, etc and I generally feel I produce a lot of value. But the second something happens that points in the other direction, even something minor like a slight flaw in a report to a client, I immediately fall into the “how am I still around?” trap. I’ve gotten good at pushing that down and moving forward until I feel good about what I’m doing again, but it’s tough.

I’m just glad I’m not the only one that feels this way; from what I can tell, this is fairly common. I wonder if this ever really goes away? It seems that for me, the more I realize I don’t know (which is, of course, always increasing along with the things I do know) the more common it gets. Curse of knowledge, I guess.