If you are like me, you are frustrated that you are not Damian Conway, writing great books, authoring highly-used and highly useful modules, and traveling the world teaching here and there and so forth.

Oddly enough, I've never had a goal to be "The Damian". Perhaps I am not like you.

I'm happy just to be helping people at the skill level I'm at, and to get a paycheck here and there for helping enough other people in a concentrated area. There are many things that Damian knows that I don't, and vice versa. There are many places that Damian's been (and taught at) that I haven't, and vice versa. What's the point of comparison.

I've been programming for 30 years now (gack, am I really that old? {grin}), and I still learn something new nearly every day. Not just trivial things either.

Probably the most important response I can give you is that you should understand your limitations, embrace them, and not work outside them. That's not to say your limitations tomorrow will be the same as today, but you should always be aware of what you don't yet know. It's perfectly fine not to know something, even though some of us think we need to know it all on day one.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker