It's been a strange week for me this week, which prompted this entry into the ever growing blog of mine. I've been waiting over a month and a half for the elusive call from Bettis about my clearance. I'd almost rather be told no than wait another day. The past two weeks, I've gone 1-3 and 1-4 at Friday Night Magic...in other words out of 9 total rounds I've won 2.

Wednesday night I got to play Magic and test some deck ideas with Anthony, and totally had a hard time putting anything together, everything I tried just fell flat.

I was feeling plain and simple like a phony. Like everything that I thought I was capable of doing I could not do. Then I recalled a blog post by Scott Hanselman: I'm a phony. Are you?

It was then that I started to realize what was wrong with me. And after talking to Jaime it all became clear:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes.

It took a long time to come to that realization. I realized that I had somehow sandwiched my self in between, being competent and being really good. I had just crossed the threshold of sucking, and gotten to the point of this entry. I am good enough to know... how much I suck, or how much I don't know.

I am good enough at Magic to win games and rounds, and put up tough games. But I am still not good enough to not make mistakes. I won my first three rounds at FNM tonight (before losing the last two). I made mistakes, in a couple games it didn't hurt me, in round 4 it crippled me.

In programming, people think I'm good...maybe it's the four certifications hanging on the wall (not literally), but I look and realize that there are tons of things I don't know how to do, that I need to work on. Especially since I'm waiting to start a development job.

I work with computers all day, and design some nice systems, quickly...but I also realized how much it is that I don't know.

So how did we fix my little crisis of confidence. Well I'm starting studying for certification number 5. I will start a playtesting/deckbuilding team with a good Magic player designed to make me better. At least to design better decks, and hopefully rub off some skill. I'll also realize that I don't have to be good at everything...