I was done. Seriously, totally burnt out. The whole thing felt like I was running on fumes, all the time, just dodging stuff. Not dodging work, I mean dodging the fact that the whole setup I was in was a bad joke. And I knew it, deep down, but you know how it is. You just keep walking around the issue because actually facing it means nuking your whole life setup. It’s easier to pretend the rotten floor isn’t there, right?
So, I started this stupid little side gig. Not really a gig, just a project. A distraction. That was the whole point. I needed a hole to climb into and just do something that wasn’t for them. Something that didn’t have a deadline or a quarterly review or some idiot asking me to make the logo five pixels bigger. I figured, I’ll build a tiny asset tracker. Something for tracking my own junk and tools, maybe try out that new framework everyone was talking about. Nobody asked me to build it. I didn’t need it. I just wanted to be busy with my own mess.
Building My Escape Hatch
I dove into it headfirst. I was using my crummy, old personal machine, the one I kept in the dusty spare room. I’d finish my actual hell job around six, grab some awful microwave dinner, and then I’d be in that room until two in the morning. Every single night. Weekends too. I remember the smell of burnt coffee and cheap electronics. It was a grind, man, but it was mine.
Here’s the stuff I actually built, just a record of what I wasted my time on:
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A basic input form: Just fields for “Thing Name,” “Location,” and “Purchase Date.” It was ugly. I didn’t care.
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A search function: Took forever to get right. I wanted it fast, so I messed around with simple indexing. Lots of late-night swearing.
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A cruddy export button: spits out a basic CSV file. That was the highlight of my week when I got that thing working without crashing the browser.
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The color scheme: Changed it three times because I got bored. Landed on some hideous green and orange combination. Pure spite.
I wasn’t sharing any of this. It was supposed to be a secret. My little, messy hiding spot away from the real world. I’d tell my wife I was just ‘cleaning up old files’ or ‘reading some docs.’ Lies. All lies. I was just avoiding the obvious fact that I needed to torch my job and find something real.
The Day the Wall Fell Down
It all came to a head a few months in. I’d just finished a huge deploy at my real job, and it was a total screw-up. Not my fault, honestly, but you know who gets the blame. The big boss called me in, the usual finger-wagging, and I just stood there, staring at his stupid tie, and I felt nothing. No anger, no fear. Just bone-deep exhaustion.
I got home that night, and instead of going to my dusty room, I just sat on the couch. I felt like a zombie. My wife came over and asked why I wasn’t coding my “files.” And I just cracked. I didn’t yell, didn’t cry. I just told her. I told her the asset tracker was total junk, and I hated it, and I didn’t need it, and I was only building it because I couldn’t stand walking into that office one more day.
That was the truth I had been running from. Not that the job was bad, but that I had been too much of a coward to leave it. I was hiding from reality behind a wall of mediocre, self-assigned code. The Seven of Swords, right? Sneaking around, avoiding the fight.
Facing the Music and the Fallout
The next morning, I walked in and resigned. No two weeks. I just packed my box. I left that company, a place I’d been at for seven years, and I walked out the door with a box of old mugs and a framed picture of my dog. It was shocking how easy it was. Like pulling off a really painful bandage.
I spent the next two months doing zero coding. Zero. I fixed the porch swing. I read books. I took my kid to the park. I finally started living like a human being again. I didn’t touch that stupid asset tracker project. It just sat on the hard drive.
Then, a buddy from my old college days called me up. He was starting a tiny firm, and he needed a guy who could just come in and build stuff without all the corporate nonsense. No fancy titles, no huge promises, just a solid paycheck and real work. It was a world away from the mess I left behind. I started there, doing simpler, more meaningful junk.
A year later, that old asset tracker—the one I built out of spite and avoidance? I actually needed one for the new firm. I opened the file. It was still hideous, still crude. But it was mine. I didn’t use the code, though. I started fresh, for a real reason, and I built something good this time. I finally used my time for building something useful, not just building a bunker to hide in.
And that, I guess, is how I finally faced the truth.
