It’s fascinating how some feelings can hit you entirely out of the blue, when you’d least expect them, but that’s what happened yesterday to me in Japan.

I was exploring the local markets at Asasuka, and I’d found the Studio Ghibli store. There were all the things you’d expect: towels, handbags, keyrings, stickers, purses; nothing that I hadn’t really seen before, and certainly nothing that I thought would change how I feel.

It’s interesting to see my changes in perspective after #BurningMan. Living in the desert wipes away the worries that exist in the default world. One’s worries about long-term things like money, household, relationships, and redundancy in your cloud infrastructure are replaced with much more immediate concerns: My tent is blowing away. I have to move 30kg of gear on foot. There is no coffee. I am on fire.

I’m back from Burning Man. After almost two weeks in the desert it feels weird to have things like electricity, running water, and fresh food. The whole thing is a pretty incredible experience; the effort required to participate in Burning Man is huge; 20+ hour car trips, the requirement to pack in and out everything you’ll need (food, water, shelter, clothing, tools), and then living in one of the most driest, hottest, and inhospitable places on earth. For the final two days I had perhaps 2 hours sleep per “night”, half of which was on a thin, dusty rug, and the other half was awkwardly stuffed into a car-seat that didn’t recline.

I often say that I’m frustrated with being human, but that’s not really true. A dog may feel anger, jealousy, fear. A chimpanzee can show understanding of consequences, but can never have the willpower to use that knowledge. Even the simplest of animals can feel pain. But it is a uniquely human ability to transcend those base drives, to consider the future, to do not what is easy, but to do what is right. It is this uniquely human property which will take us to the stars. It is this property which allows us to become more ethical than the society in which we are raised.

You might have encountered the term Impostor Syndrome, where people feel that they’re somehow “faking it”. This is common with programmers, artists, public speakers, and I suspect anyone who is able to see the faults in their own work, despite others judging that work on its merits.

If you’ve ever started a thought with “You may be impressed now, but if you only knew I was just making it up/not doing it the right way/not really that cool/lucky/had good timing/have no idea what I’m doing”, then you may know what impostor syndrome is like. If you’ve been feeling that way a lot—and I know people with years of experience who still don’t consider themselves “a real programmer/artist/performer/badass”—then you might actually have impostor syndrome.