I Hid Who I Was to Belong in Tech

For most of my career I tried to hide who I actually am in order to succeed.

I built characters of myself. To be respected. To be accepted. To be someone.

Nobody asked me to. It was something I felt I had to do. That if I showed my sensitivity, if I showed how eccentric I actually am, if I said what I really thought about things, I would be rejected. That I would not get to be part of the tech world.

It started at my first job. A company builder. I copied the behavior of the people around me, and only one thing was rewarded there. Feelings did not matter. The colder you were, the more they respected you. So I got very cold. Cold enough that when the CEO gave me a colleague's position and then asked me to fire her myself, I did it. It felt like I was passing a test. It was one. He told me so afterward.

Inside I was dying. Because if there is one thing I am before anything else, it is a sensitive person. But the lesson I took from that stayed with me for years.

Disconnecting from your emotions is how you behave if you want to win.

Then I went into venture capital and put on the venture capital skin. I dressed like them. I talked like them. I knew what could be said in public and what could not. What could be said in private and what could not. And I knew there were things I simply could not say, because saying them would put me outside.

Then I got into crypto. Everyone was brilliant at logic, brilliant at math, brilliant at finance. I didn't understand most of it. I still do not, to this day. I led global communications for projects in DeFi without understanding a thing. I pulled it off with an insane number of hours and a lot of pain.

The logical part never interested me. Something else always did. The vision, the possibilities of creating a different reality, using words to change perception. But I bent myself, I submitted myself, so I could belong. I was obsessed with being a pioneer. With standing at the technological frontier of the world.

That brought me a very deep suffering. I could never be like the others. And if the others were the measure of success, then what could I do?

And to cover the comparisons with everyone else, to cover that constant effort of being something I was not, I used alcohol. I used drugs. I used work. I used sex.

The strange part is that the characters I created for me never fully worked. Who you really are always leaks out through the cracks. And maybe that is exactly what let me get as far as I got. Underneath everything, it was always me.

But inside it always hurt.

The last time it happened was when I was laid off from Base a few months ago. That is when I finally understood something.

The more I actually am myself, the more I can embody my real essence. When I am connected inside, I am whole, and what the outside gives back matters less.

Fifteen years in, I realize that being myself matters more than anything I achieve.

As within, so without.