Blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours shine any brighter.
Unknown
I wish more people actually took that to heart. All it does is, in the end, is make you look like a petty asshole. That you need to put someone else down to feel better about yourself speaks to self-esteem issues that I don’t even want to talk about.
I get not giving away “trade secrets”, but I’ve watched people that I know actively work to make sure that others in their field fail. For me, we’re all writers, we’re all authors. If I can offer a helping hand up, I will. I draw the line at supporting people who have abused me. For me, I nothing them. They have no support, no recognition from me. They don’t exist. I put my wellbeing first.
I don’t understand people who are like that. Who are so wrapped into their own mindset of personal greatness that they strike at people who work in the same field. Yeah, I’ve got imposter syndrome. I know that. Due to past experiences I’ve learned to read everything through a filter of “Is this sarcasm?”. I also don’t like being called an expert. An expert denotes, in a lot of cases, that you are at the top of your field. Even if I may be near the top, I know that I have always got things to learn. Things are rarely static. Things change all the time. What I knew yesterday pales in comparison to what I’ll know tomorrow, next week, a year from now.
Who I am is a person who will help, in the past at the cost of myself, but now when it doesn’t risk my safety in any sense (mental, physical, emotional).
As Bill and Ted have said…
Be Awesome to Each Other!
