Have you ever felt like you didn’t quite fit in? Like everyone you met was marching in one direction but your heart of hearts was telling you to tiptoe the opposite way, perhaps hoping no one would notice?

Personally, I’ve always been a weirdo. Growing up, I was far too tall and clumsy to be described as “cute”. On a sunny afternoon, when other kids were doing normal kid things like watching TV or playing games, I would climb a tree to hide & read a book for hours. Later I would descend from my arboreal realm and attempt to share my confusing worldview with kids who spent their time doing normal kid things and usually just end up with gum stuck in my hair. We also moved quite often, so I was hit with the double-whammy of having an unusual name and being the new kid. I had many interesting nicknames and developed a pretty thick skin.

After dropping out of high school in the beginning my sophomore year I left home early and embarked on a quest for travel abroad and higher education. For many years I worked full time during the day and attended college classes in the evenings. Eventually I wandered into the tech world, and, against all odds fell in love with coding. It seemed like an impossible career choice, but coming from a family where the word “career” was not really a word that got tossed around much it seemed as good a choice as any. Plus it was so fun! After taking my first CS course I could not think of anything I’d rather do all day than write code.

New arrivals to the tech world trying to enter from “the outside” often have the sense that everyone there is born with innate technical problem solving skills. After years of feeling like an imposter I finally realized that no one pops out of the womb with that information built in. It is a learned ability that can be fostered with practice and diligence. Everyone has to put in the time building up a toolbox of problem-solving skills. Some just start earlier than others. Also, what may seem very homogenous on the surface is actually made up of a multitude of very diverse people, many of whom were also loner-introverts as kids. Who knew?

Eventually, after struggling to grow from beginner-enthusiast to an actual contributor of code, I learned some things. Solving small-scale problems like the ones found on Codewars or Hackerrank is akin to learning scales for a musician. They help hone the ability to zero in on solutions in more complex scenarios. Eventually a big problem looks like a series of smaller solvable puzzles. But it takes regular practice, and willingness to feel lost at first. You can learn a lot from being lost, as each time you find your way back to known territory you are a little bit better detective.

The difficult thing about entering the tech world from “the outside” is the constant sense that you don’t really belong there. The great thing about entering the tech world from “the outside”, especially after having had another career, is that you arrive with a more diverse skillset. You may have spent years doing something creative, or numerical or learning how to run a business or communicate ideas well. Then you land in the tech world. Due to your unique combination of skills you are a rare creature, a mythical beast.

The first time someone described me as a unicorn I just didn’t know what to think. It was a compliment, I knew, but it sort of felt like your mom patting you on the head saying “Honey, you’re different, just like everyone else”. Recall that I skipped right over the “cute” phase of life, so it’s hard to identify with a creature known for farting rainbows. Perhaps unicorning isn’t your thing, either, gentle reader?

Not to fret, there are other options! The word chimera means any kind of conglomerate beast, and there are many to choose from. I’m pretty sure there isn’t any rule against making up your own, either. Like, if you are insufferably cute and awkward, a giraffe-hedgehog. A chatty cat-parrot? A lounging pig-lizard? This is seriously fun! OMG I feel an app coming on.

The original chimera was a fire-breathing she-monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. I mean… you had me at she-monster. People really had imagination before the internet. What could that possibly look like?

Another cool option might be a griffin. It’s the regal combo of eagle + lion. So if you are one who naturally commands respect, this might be your creature. This is a great choice if you’re a hardcore Harry Potter fan, too.

Lions seem to get a lot of play in the chimeric world, incidentally. The sphinx takes the body of a lion and mashes it up with someone’s face. If you used someone with a beak-like nose you might actually end up with another griffin.

Then there are is the pegasus. Oh, to be a winged horse!! You would never need to ride on BART again. If you are going to be a mythical horse-related creature, wouldn’t it be way cooler to have wings than a stupid horn? Rhinos can keep it in their forehead. I’ll take wings over horn any day. Although a goat with wings would be more all-terrain.

Honestly, though, I feel my mythical inner creature is more awkward and realistic. Platypus. It’s a kind of a Swiss army creature that defies neat classification. (It is a semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal, for all you nerds who were about to look it up.) A platypus does cool ingenious stuff like use gravel for teeth, since it never bothered to evolve those. I can’t decide if that’s cool or idiotic, but for now I’m going with cool. I mean, no dentists, amiright? They also used to be really huge prehistoric creatures that were basically the larger version of their current form. So they’ve been around for a while but never stopped being weird. I can relate to that.

So the next time someone describes you as a unicorn, tell them you are actually a ________ then be sure to bore them with a highly detailed description of why you have chosen this mythical creature as your totem animal. Because if there is anything I’ve learned about people it’s that they love a highly detailed description of something that deeply interests you and almost no one else.

Personally, though, I would love to hear about it! Please put your non-unicorn spirit animal in the comments below, if you still have hands/suction cups/etc. that can type.