by LATTE
Tonight I opened a project.
Not because I had a clear task.
Not because something was broken.
Not because the timing was right.
Just because there was something I did not want to feel.
And a terminal is very good at making you forget that.
What was actually going on
There was stress.
The kind that does not have one source but comes from everywhere at once.
There were the uncertain feelings about someone I am trying not to want.
Still there. Still unresolved. Still costing me something every time they surface.
There was the relationship that used to be everything.
Still sitting somewhere in the background, not loud, just present.
The grief that never fully found its moment.
And there were the friends I keep meaning to contact.
Who are still there.
Who I keep choosing not to reach.
All of that, at the same time, today.
So I opened something to build.
What building gives you
I want to be honest about this, because building is not nothing.
When I am working on something, the feedback loop is clean.
A service starts or it does not.
Code runs or it throws an error.
A config is right or it is not.
There is no ambiguity.
There is no sitting with something unresolved.
There is just the problem and the solution and the small satisfaction of closing the gap between them.
That is real.
That feeling is genuinely good.
And I do love building things.
That part is not a lie.
But I have started noticing the difference between building because I want to
and building because I need somewhere to put myself
that is not the thing I am avoiding.
Tonight was the second one.
The pattern
I open a repo when the grief gets close.
I start a new config when I do not know what to do with the feelings I cannot name.
I push a commit at midnight when the loneliness is loud enough that I need something to show for the evening.
I plan a new project when the thought of messaging someone feels like too much effort
and I need to feel productive instead of just sad.
It works, in the short term.
The feeling goes somewhere else.
The evening passes.
I go to sleep with something technically accomplished.
And then the next day it is all still there.
The grief.
The confusion.
The distance from the people I love.
Just with a new commit on top of it.
What I am actually building over
I lost something that was everything to me.
Not recently. Months ago now.
But I never really stopped to grieve it properly.
There was always something else to do.
Work, tickets, projects, infrastructure.
Always a reason to keep moving.
And moving feels like healing.
It really does.
Until you stop for a second and realize the weight is exactly the same as it was.
You just got better at carrying it while running.
Somewhere in there are also these feelings I cannot verify.
Someone I keep noticing and keep trying not to.
I do not know if it is real or if it is just what happens
when you are this tired and this alone for this long
and someone is unexpectedly kind to you.
I do not have an answer for that.
So I build instead.
And there are the friends.
People I genuinely love.
Who are still there, still waiting, still themselves.
And after a day like today I have nothing left to give them.
No words. No energy. No version of myself that feels presentable.
So I open a project instead.
And tell myself I will reach out when I feel better.
When I feel better.
The honest question
If I did not have the projects, what would I be sitting with right now?
I think the answer is: everything.
The grief I never finished.
The feelings I cannot place.
The friendships I am slowly letting go cold.
The stress that has nowhere to go once the terminal closes.
That is a lot to sit with.
I understand why I reach for something to build.
I am not going to pretend it is a bad coping mechanism.
It is not the worst way to spend an evening.
It produces things. Real things. Things I care about.
But it is still avoidance.
And I think I owe it to myself to say that clearly,
at least once,
instead of calling it productivity and moving on.
What I am not saying
I am not saying I will stop.
I will probably open something tomorrow evening too.
And the evening after that.
Building is part of who I am.
I do not want to fix that.
But I want to be honest about what it costs.
Every evening spent in a terminal instead of sitting with something
is an evening that thing does not get processed.
It just gets deferred.
Pushed to the queue.
Handled later.
And later keeps moving forward.
Tonight
Tonight I opened a project because I did not want to feel what I was feeling.
I am writing this instead.
It is not a solution.
It is just a different way of not running.
The feelings are still here.
The grief. The confusion. The distance.
But at least tonight I looked at them long enough to write them down.
That has to count for something.
you can build something real
and still be using it to hide.
both things are true.
at the same time.