Well, what if Mwop found out I wasn’t as good in ZF as he thought I was, would he still enjoy hanging out with me? What if Derick found out I barely knew C, would he still talk to me? What if Cal found out I needed the PHP manual to remember the arguments order of most PHP functions, would he reveal to the whole PHP Community what a fraud I was? How many friends would I have left? I didn’t want to lose any of my friends, but the (imagined) idea of that being a very likely option put a huge amount of pressure on me. After the contract that would send me to the USA fell through and I experienced an (unrelated) actual panic attack, going to conferences and meet-ups became impossible for me. Not only did I get “robbed” from my hopes & dreams, the fear of having a panic attack at a conference, and becoming “that guy that fainted at that conference” was too much pressure for me to deal with.
Amazingly brave and powerful post by Remi Woler.