Tools as Superpowers 💪

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I had these thoughts lately: what if I can't use Emacs anymore? Maybe I can't install Emacs due to some policy, or my future laptop is Windows and Emacs and other tools can't be installed easily. The restriction itself is not important. The point is what if I find myself without the software I'm used to? Am I now 50% myself? Am I a fraud, by letting others think my skill set level is somewhere up here, but without the tools it's much lower?

My way of thinking about this was that I have great capabilities because some of the tools I use. Again, we can mention Emacs and orgmode if we talk about organization, tasks and projects management, scheduling, knowledge management, all of which are important in any field. Losing these will impact my skills.

But then I realized it's the other way around. Because I have great capabilities, I surrounded myself with the tools that multiply my abilities. It's **because** of skills, interests and capabilities that I am constantly looking for better tools, methods, ideas that will help me be better at what I do. I download and learn new software tools, learn every app's keyboard shortcuts, install utilities to be more efficient and learn to automate repetitive tasks.

It's not the tools that make me strong; it's because I'm strong I'm using these tools.

I think this line of thought was caused due to some form of imposter syndrome. But it's also the healthy fear of stepping out of my comfort zone in the future, which in this case is the software environment I built around myself. But as I convinced myself, I'm not who I am because of the software, the software is there because of who I am. Is that makes sense?

Thoughts, ideas, rebuttals? hit me on my tilde email.