Two Thousand and Two Ways to Feel Inadequate

Hello inadequacy, my old friend. I've come to battle you again.

This morning, I woke up and did a quick scroll through LinkedIn. Within the first few minutes, I saw:

• A project someone launched that I wish I had launched
• A post from someone I keep meaning to follow up with
• An article written by a colleague that I wish I had thought to write
• An event I probably should have attended
• Multiple opportunities to engage that I didn't end up pursuing because of how overwhelmed I started to feel

This is going to sound a little presumptuous, but it's a helpful framing device: I think people look at me as someone who is on top of things and who is accomplishing a lot. Some of that is self inflicted, as I am very open about how thrilled I am to have this job, and I am active on social media and post frequently about projects I'm involved in, articles of written, events I've attended, connections I've made, etc.

But that perception deepens my feelings of inadequacy. The more that I do, the more opportunities I see. Yet I'm still only one person, and I'm increasingly trying to be mindful of how much I let work influence my personal life. Which is to say, I only have so much time, and it's unreasonable to expect myself to do, well, everything.

LinkedIn scrolling not only triggers inadequacy, but also jealousy. I don't like that at all. When I take a step back and think about it, I am genuinely thrilled to see others posting about their successes, connections, and projects. With the right mindset, those posts provide the perfect opportunity for me to be able to engage publicly to help celebrate accomplishments, offer support, and ask questions. But if I'm being honest, all too frequently, jealousy is one of the first things I feel.

A couple years ago, I made a short post about "a thousand and one ways to feel inadequate." A good friend and I would often describe our law school experience like that. No matter what we were accomplishing, no matter what we had lined up, there were always new things popping up that made us feel inadequate. In that post, I described feeling similarly when scrolling through LinkedIn.

This morning drew into sharp focus that since that initial post, I've encountered another thousand and one ways to feel inadequate. For those of you keeping score at home, that puts me at two thousand and two ways – I'm going for the record here.

But the fact that I made a similar post two years ago is actually kind of the point. These things don't go away. From time to time, I find it really helpful to name how I'm feeling, and my hope is that being open about my internal struggles here can help others acknowledge and deal with similar struggles.

Today, it's inadequacy and jealousy, at least at first blush. But reflecting on this helps me level set and think about ways to calm those feelings so that I can instead focus on how I can support others and be reasonable about what I expect myself to accomplish.

Now, let's see how long it takes to get to three thousand and three...