Learning the Importance of Knowledge Sharing

As what happens to a lot of people, my computer's hard drive died a few weeks ago and I lost everything. I do mean everything. Some small pet projects were lost completely because I refused to upload my code base to github. Why didn't I? Because I was afraid to show what I don't know.

This may be one of the hardest lessons for me to learn in my journey. Growing up as the perennial whiz kid, to not have the best way to do something or to not have the right answer was a personal failure, and I would rather sit and rehash on a problem for a long time before I would ask a question. So of course, I'm in an industry where what is right or best changes rapidly and can be different from one person to another and in an ideology where one can't and shouldn't sit and stew by themselves.

What I'm slowly learning is that I have to be willing to expose myself in order to grow. Be willing to ask one too questions and to treat each setback not as a downfall but as a learning experience. I should be able to put my work out there for all to see and comment. Knowing me though, it will be a process. But even now, I've started to ask more questions allowing me to start minimizing personal frustration and stewing. Though I do still greatly struggle with wanting bottle up my work. But I have to be able to put it out there so that I'm not limited to my own experience and ideas, but have to access an industry's experience and ideas.

Writing this, I realize what may be the issue. I wish to to be able to give at least as much input as I'm receiving. But still being a relative beginner surrounded by those with more experience and more insight, I can't legitimately see this ideal being reached. In the end though, I have to willing to go in the red with input before I can move forward into the black in the future. I just have to take a confident foot forward with that investment.