Fozzation
July 1, 2022

Helpdesk is the starting point for a lot of people's journeys into the colossal, always overwhelming world of technology. Exciting and terrifying have never been better married together in this odyssey from a college dropout to entering the battlefield of start-up help desks. But what if you feel in your heart of hearts that you don’t have what it takes? What if while your co-workers get promoted, you get left in the dust, feeding into the inescapable abyss of darkness and anxiety you call a mind? This isn’t a self-help piece. I don’t have the answers. I’m just a twenty-four-year-old struggling at the bottom of the tech world.

I’ve been at the helpdesk position for a year now. In the past year, the imposter syndrome’s glooming, thick, dark shadow has won by a considerable margin. The thing about imposter syndrome for those who don’t suffer from it is it suffocates you under the cloak of self-doubt. The voice in your head tells you that you aren’t enough- that you are an imbecile, and the worst part is that you believe it with your entire being.

Despite trying my hardest on answering tickets to my best capabilities, I rank as one of the lowest people on my team of 20. This doesn’t particularly surprise me; I know I don’t compare to my co-workers.

Do I want to do better?
Hell yeah!
Will I?
I hope so.

That’s what the plague of self-doubt and imposter syndrome does to you. I don’t know if I will ever do better despite wanting to more than anything. I want to succeed and make the person who trained me proud, but I don’t know if I can. Not only that, but I constantly feel so incredibly half-witted and I am not even on the same plane of existence as those who were hired before or even after me.

The hapless and helpful thing about the helpdesk position is that you can persistently check your metrics and how you compare to the others on your team. Nothing drowns your spirit faster than someone naturally gifted in helpdesk who is significantly your junior triple your ticket count.

In the world of technology, metrics are king. How fast did you solve that customer's question? Did they smash that like button after having a conversation with you? Soon, if you are like me, those metrics become the gorge you must escape. You need to do better than last week; you have to be likeable, the customers have to love you. How can you expect people to think highly of you when you think of yourself as a shadow, cloaked in mind fog?

I have settled on ignoring the voice in my head, will I be successful? Not all the time, but in the hour since I started writing this it’s been going okay.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel. You are in fact in a cave you have no recollection of falling into. The surroundings are dark and unfamiliar, but you have no option but to dig yourself out and make the light for yourself. I have yet to escape the cavern of my own creation and maybe you are a stuck in a pit yourself. I hope with all my heart that at least one of us gets out.