Inspired by this thread, I looked up Freud's 12 Human Defense Mechanism when negative emotions stew in our mind to look at how I delude myself on daily basis: https://kevinfitzmaurice.com/self-esteem/self-esteem-issues/...

1. Over-compensation/Projection: To overcome my greatest fear that I'm just a programmer making a comfortable living but ultimately making meaningless web apps for BigCo or for startups but afraid of sitting with this feeling for too long; I try to "cultivate" cultural hobbies like playing in a blues band, joined a rec-league, travel, attend book/film clubs to convince myself that I'm different than the other people but find people who are most like me in the book clubs and art galleries openings are just as empty, pretentious and obnoxious. Similarly I project onto others my insecurity, and judge them accordingly to the snobbery by the impact factor (IF) of their "CV" and of their "cultural output".

2. Denial/Ritual for Undoing/Regression: I escape via various social media distractions and comfort food. I go to startup social gatherings, when the caffeine or alcoholic or fun-social distraction buzz kick-in, I convince myself that this is the way things are suppose to go. But the buzz wears off, I realize that my problems are still there and chasing that original high with that good sushi meal, new brew of coffee or dance-party venue feel like eating a diminishing return chocolate cake.

3. Displacement/Identification: I visit a lot of right-wing subreddits like /r/the_donald that rage against the left-wing subreddits to the point that I realize that as much as I hate on the facebook feeds of my enemies on the left, they have also now become my indisposable personal crucible because the outrage inspired has become almost a comforting ally to lean onto to channel my otherwise impotent rage; I visit HN and glow over the triumphs by techies like unveiling of new Tesla model or new VR headsets and startup podcasts and blog posts about the #hustle. I sometimes even Google search pictures of PR pictures of Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes (before she became reviled by this forum) while listening to positive YouTube music video's to bask in the positive glow.

4. Acceptance/Humble Identification/Sublimation: I accept that I won't ever be like Elon Musk or Elizabeth Holmes or a mere YC Founder for that matter. I've been trying to find more realistic models to model my behavior like my boss who is very organized, shows up to work on time and is very empathy for people, but someone who is otherwise (gasp) an average person judged by my earlier metric of Personal Impact Factor. I try to find more socially acceptable, stable and support roles like playing Healer heroes in Dota2 or LoL instead of battling it out with my team about who to play to the Carry; my fear of just giving in and becoming just an mediocre everyman like Willie Loman, I just let go and trying to keep score every day cleared up to make room to find simple joys like washing dishes, taking out the trash on time and closing JIRA tickets. Walking by the local hip and edgy co-working space, I cannot help but feel a tinge of poetic sadomasochism that in order to attain peace, I chased the opposite of what I was afraid of becoming only to end up becoming the very thing of this existential guilt by way of being wore down by the daily pressure of unable to run away from this guilt; and realizing that this guilt of unbecoming of the becoming is also the real unbecoming, but the real becoming is also the unbecoming.