After reading my post about being a girl, one of my closest friends wrote:

I never thought you ever got such thoughts:

And when the shadows in my head whisper that I'm not as good as the others,
not as geeky as the others, I drown them in Emacs Lisp. ;)

I always saw you as someone strong and has everything together – yeah like
you are a hitchhiker with your towel with you all the time ;)

I get that a lot, the nagging thoughts that I am not as good as others.
It's kinda tough when that happens because I still haven't figured out what
my strengths are. I am something like a Jack of all trades but a master of
none. And that is something I have to live with everyday.

This is one of the reasons why I think out loud. I want to connect
with other people on a deeper level. It is important to me to be
human, approachable and understandable. This blog will not be a
polished, professional archive of useful articles. It will have my
cooking misadventures, my existential crises, my questions. My
issues, as a friend put it. Yes, I have issues. Not very
earth-shaking ones, mind you, but I have more questions than I have
answers – and I love that!

I talk a lot about feeling insecure, but that's because I love looking
for what I can learn from other people. I don't feel threatened as
much as I feel inspired. My confidence is not a show that I put on for
other people. When I'm in my element, the energy I get from people and
from the situation fills me.

When I falter, friends help me remember. You help me remember who I am
and why I'm here. My blog lets me go back and look over things in my
own words, searching for similar times to find out what I did and how
I resolved the situation.

Sometimes it may seem that I'm worried too much about how I measure up
to other people (5'1/4″? ;) ) or that I feel too insecure. But hey, we
all have different strengths, and I love exploring different things in
order to find out how I can be of most benefit to the world. =)

(Besides, one of the cool things about this picture is that the bird on the lower line can see everything that's going on! ;) )