I can has self esteem? More?

I recently remembered one of the reasons I usually have a pull-down resistor on my self.perception_of_abilities pin. Putting a blanket "I don't know stuff" setting out makes it easier to deal with people who seem to think you know less than you (probably) do, because you can chalk it up to your directly telling them to treat you like a n00b instead of... other things.

(What I perceive as) the assumptions of others about my ability levels are not always correct. I shouldn't let myself be tossed around by them like this. I should not let something somebody else says suddenly cause me to see myself as incompetent. But it does. And this rankles me - not so much that I think someone else has made that assumption, but that I'm not certain enough in my own abilities to be able to stand my ground and calmly proceed, instead of immediately flying into "wait, do I suck? How can I prove - to myself and them - that I don't?" mode. I like being responsive and reactive, but... not that way. It makes me less effective.

Over the years, i've definitely learned how to not seem outwardly affected by this. I continue doing what I think I ought to be doing, but it spawns a back-of-brain thread that sucks up extra cycles that could be used to better effect, and I have to spend time afterwards - talking to a friend over dinner, writing, whatever - hunting down and killing those rogue processes. And I don't like being motivated by a desire to prove myself to anyone; I want to be motivated by doing things that I think are important and useful and fun, not boosting up my karma/ego/score on some arbitrary chart.

Bleh. Okay. I think that's purged it from my mind. Back to the code.