I am back from Berlin after spending a few days last week at Beyond Tellerrand where I was a speaker! It was my first time attending as well. Before that, in September, I did the same talk in Freiburg at Smashing Conference.

In both events I gave the talk that I worked on the first half of this year about modernising and maintaining CSS. Now that this is all done, I want to write out all my feelings.

The origin of this talk

Everything I say on that talk is true:

This talk came to my head after returning to work following a year of maternity leave two years ago. That year away coincided with an explosion of new CSS features I’m still catching up on even now.

I was always wondering ”What was the latest approach? How do you build a hero nowadays? What about a card? What had the experts written while I was away?”. So I created this overwhelming pressure that I needed to prove that I “still had it” and that becoming a mother hadn’t somehow diminished my technical skills.

So my return to work became unexpectedly miserable. I was terrified of making mistakes or choosing suboptimal solutions. The blank canvas that once excited me now left me anxious and riddled with decision paralysis.

This is the origin story of this talk. But there was another thought that creeped in: I wanted to be seen as someone who is vaguely professional. I know, I know! I jest on my social media bios. I normally say that I work as a "unprofessional front end developer" but I do wish to feel like I belong. That the respect between me and my peers is mutual and that I am worth something.

Despite being someone who enjoys seeing everyone being their unapologetic self, every once in a while I look at my "unpolished" layout of my blog and feel a little bit insecure. Also, not so long ago, I gave a silly talk about creating an in-browser gamified karaoke where I embraced the cringe and sang to hundreds of people. I suddenly began to feel afraid that I could be typecasted as... too silly. It feels like others do "silly" better than me and I just didn't want to feel like the class clown.

This means that I was out of my comfort zone. I know I am good employee and that sometimes I write and share "serious" and useful things here too but still I had this quiet whisper in my brain saying "who the hell am I to say anything".

As I began the write the talk, I realised that I can't simply go around and say "do CSS like this" because that's not how CSS works. CSS simply works. There's multiple ways of achieving the same visual result and they are all right. So I had to lean in on real life struggles that end up not being code related at all.

So the fear and terror began to creep in... I wasn't sharing innovative and groundbreaking code that would make me look super smart!

I knew I had to tie it to a story - I am not a professional speaker and I don't have a catalog of experience. I've seen lots and lots of talks and I always enjoyed a side story, metaphor or comparison so I leaned into that and attached the story of the current stage of my life: a house renovation.

My innner critic was pulling extra shifts: "Oh dear... this is a bit personal..."

Then I thought: "It's missing some imagery - let me draw things in the only style I know".

"Oh no. Now it looks like my silly blog."

And I became a little bit anxious. Some days I was defending myself "Nope, this is me. It's okay to be me", other days I was lying awake staring at my bedroom ceiling because I was so afraid I would disappoint all the organisers and attendees.

At this point I had to create a rule. No self bad talk until this talk is finished. Detect the thought and drown it. Do the thing my therapist used to nag me about. Turns out it helps.

Eventually, the time to practise with friends came and the first run of it in public happened. And all was fine! The world didn't end!

The support act

When I did my "less serious karaoke talk" at conferences, I felt completely comfortable with it. I was comfortable with being the silly one in a line-up full of people I admire. It's almost like I said to myself "well, they are the smart ones, I am in my lane".

For this talk, every time a new speaker was announced, it was always someone who was incredible, respected and super smart and I always had a racing thought "oh no, who even am I to be there as well". Perhaps it was the famous imposter syndrome people talk about but to me it felt like I didn't belong. I've been attending meet-ups and conferences as a hobby for more than 10 years! It's weird seeing myself in those line-ups and believe that I belong there. It's like becoming a support act for a music festival that you've been attending since forever alongside the big names.

Living in the limbo

I don't know what other speakers do but I never feel like a talk is finished. There's always more clarification or more resources that be added. In fact, this photo from Florian at btconf captures exactly the feeling of limbo, fear and questioning myself and my slides just before I gave my talk.

Photo by Florian Ziegler.

So even though I had my talk "finished" before June, I never felt like I could finally relax. To me, the shift only ended in November. I gave this talk 5 times and in all of them something always changed. Every day I scrolled through my feeds and keep an eye on things that I could improve on my talk. This is quite exhausting. I spent the first 6 months of this year working on it, then the other 5 months were spent sourcing for improvements.

Last Friday afternoon, I had this intense feeling of relief that was so obvious on my face that people commented on it!

What's next?

I don't know but I don't want to force anything. This is a side gig to me and an experience for myself as my current job doesn't require me to do talks. I mean, I always have a talk in my pocket about the IndieWeb if anyone is interested!

I'm sure that during this year I was a fucking pain in the arse to those close to me. I was so afraid and doubting myself that most times I couldn't believe the kind things people were telling me. I asked for reassurance a lot and, for that, I am sorry. I just really really wanted to do well. But I think it is time to fully embrace my silly self and just be that person - even if it is "unprofessional".