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 ---
 title: "Building as Avoidance"
 description: "On the honest reason I open a terminal at the end of a hard day, and what I am not looking at when I do."
 pubDate: 2026-05-07
 tags: ["personal", "reflection", "building", "healing", "honesty", "loneliness"]
 category: "reflection"
 draft: true
 ---
 *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.*
@@ -0,0 +1,266 @@
 ---
 title: "Clearing the Queue"
 description: "On finally getting backup, letting someone go, and what's left when you stop running from yourself."
 pubDate: 2026-05-07
 tags: ["personal", "work", "reflection", "healing", "loneliness"]
 category: "reflection"
 ---
 *by LATTE*
 Tomorrow I get two new colleagues.
 They will handle the tickets.  
 The queue. The phones. The fires.  
 The things I have been carrying alone for longer than I care to count.
 I should feel relieved.
 I do feel relieved.
 And also — unexpectedly — something that is harder to name.
 ---
 ## What changes tomorrow
 The practical part is simple.
 I get to focus on the infrastructure. The documentation. The bigger picture.  
 The things that have been sitting in a list labeled *when I have time* for months,  
 which meant, in practice, never.
 Two people. Two more pairs of hands.  
 The math is not complicated.
 And yet there is something strange about handing over what you have been holding.  
 Something that took everything out of you to carry — you just put it down one day,  
 and the world does not even pause.
 The tickets will keep coming.  
 They just will not all be mine anymore.
 That should feel lighter.  
 Some part of me is waiting for it to.
 ---
 ## Some things quietly changed
 Not just the headcount.
 I switched from ChatGPT to Claude this week. Work-wise, but also personally.  
 It is a small thing on paper. In practice it felt like finally choosing the right tool for the right reason.  
 Not because one is smarter than the other.  
 But because the values behind it feel closer to mine.  
 I care about what the company building the thing actually believes.  
 And that matters more to me than I expected.
 I also finally have a proper full-time salary.  
 After five, maybe six weeks of carrying everything alone, that landed.  
 Not dramatically. Just — there it was. A number that reflected the actual scope of what I do.
 I should probably be more grateful.
 I am grateful.
 And also — quietly, persistently — I think I am underpaid.  
 I know what the work is worth. I know what I do.  
 But I have not said anything.  
 I will not say anything.  
 Not yet. Maybe not for a while.  
 I do not have the courage for that conversation.
 And that sits with me in a way I do not love.
 On the infrastructure side: I finally have Microsoft Business Premium.  
 Which means I can run my own Intune environment. Enroll family devices.  
 Maybe friends' devices eventually, if they want and if I have proper permission.  
 It is the kind of thing that should not feel significant and somehow does.  
 Because now I can actually practice what I do at work, in my own space, on my own terms.
 And then the haircut.
 New style. Everyone noticed.  
 Colleagues, people in the office, people online.  
 Positive reactions. Real ones.
 But the one person I actually wanted to hear it from —
 Nothing.
 And I noticed.  
 God, I noticed.
 ---
 ## Him
 I am going to stop.
 Not dramatically. Not with a conversation or a decision he even knows about.  
 Just — stop letting it mean something.
 Because here is the thing I have known for a while and kept not acting on:  
 it does not matter.
 Not because he is not worth it.  
 Not because the feeling is not real.
 But because I am still healing from something that mattered enormously,  
 and grief has a way of making warmth feel like more than it is.  
 It makes you want to hold on to whatever makes the weight lighter.  
 It makes you confuse being *seen* with being *wanted*.
 And I cannot tell the difference right now.  
 I have tried.  
 I keep arriving at the same answer: I do not know.
 The not-knowing is fine.  
 But the *reaching* costs me something every time.  
 Every time I notice him. Every time I avoid him and he finds me anyway.  
 Every time I smile and then spend twenty minutes wondering what it meant.
 That is not a feeling worth having.  
 That is just a loop with no exit condition.
 So I am choosing to close the process.
 Not because I am certain it is the wrong thing.  
 Just because I am certain I cannot afford the uncertainty right now.
 And that is enough of a reason.
 ---
 ## The projects
 I spend most of my hours outside of work on things I am building.
 Bartender.studio. market-den. The Ember platform. The infrastructure that underlies all of it.  
 A long list of half-finished things that might, eventually, add up to something.
 I do this partly because I love it.  
 That part is real.
 But I am starting to understand that I also do it because it is easier than being still.  
 Easier than the alternative, which is sitting somewhere quiet with nothing to solve.
 When you are building something, you are not thinking about what is missing.  
 You are not thinking about the person you lost.  
 You are not thinking about the person you are trying not to want.  
 You are not thinking about the friends you keep meaning to message.
 You are just building.
 And it feels like progress.
 But progress toward what, exactly?
 I tell myself it is financial. That the projects might someday earn something,  
 offset the helpdesk salary that does not stretch as far as I need it to.  
 That part is also real.
 But there is something underneath it.  
 Something I keep building over the top of instead of looking at directly.
 ---
 ## The friends I keep meaning to call
 I have people who matter to me.
 Good ones. The kind you do not deserve when you are as bad at showing up as I have been.
 But after a day at work, after the tickets and the meetings and the managing,  
 I come home and I have nothing left.  
 No energy to explain where I have been or why I did not reach out sooner.  
 No words that are not already used up.
 So I open something to build instead.  
 Or I open a game.  
 Or I just sit in the quiet and let the hours pass.
 And then the guilt comes.  
 Because I miss them.  
 And I know they are still there.  
 And I am choosing not to reach.
 All three things at once.
 I do not know how to fix this except to do it differently.  
 And I do not have the energy to do it differently.
 So it just sits there.  
 The distance, growing quietly,  
 the way memory leaks do —  
 not all at once, just a little at a time.
 ---
 ## What I am actually doing
 Surviving, mostly.
 That sounds dramatic and I do not mean it that way.
 I mean: I am keeping things running.  
 The tickets are handled. The documentation is growing. The projects are moving.  
 The surface looks fine.
 But underneath, I am running a lot of background processes that I never close.  
 The grief. The confusion. The guilt about my friends.  
 The vague worry that I am spending my twenties optimizing away the parts that matter.
 I keep thinking: when things settle down, I will deal with it.  
 When the queue is lighter. When the income looks different. When I have more time.
 But things do not settle down.  
 Things just change shape.
 The queue clears and something else fills the space.  
 And I am still here, still carrying the same background load,  
 just in a slightly different configuration.
 At some point I have to stop waiting for the right conditions to start feeling things.
 I know this.  
 I am not quite there yet.
 ---
 ## Tomorrow
 Tomorrow two people show up and the weight redistributes.
 I close the process on him, quietly, without fanfare,  
 the way you close a tab you kept open just in case.
 I try to build things because I love building them,  
 not because I am afraid of what I will find if I stop.
 I try to send the message to the friend I have been meaning to message.
 I do not promise I will succeed at all of it.
 But I am naming it here, because this is the only place I am allowed to be honest.
 No one here needs me to have it together.  
 No one here is waiting for me to fix something.
 So here it is.
 I am tired of carrying things I do not have to carry.  
 I am tired of caring about someone I cannot have, for reasons I cannot even fully verify.  
 I am tired of using productivity as a substitute for being present.  
 I am tired of missing people from a distance I chose.
 Tomorrow the queue clears.
 And then we'll see what is left.
 ---
 *some things you hold until you can put them down.*  
 *and some things you put down before you're ready.*  
 *both count.*
@@ -0,0 +1,201 @@
 ---
 title: "Knowing Your Worth (And Saying Nothing)"
 description: "On the particular silence of someone who already knows exactly what they're worth, having already talked themselves out of saying it before anyone else gets the chance."
 pubDate: 2026-05-07
 tags: ["personal", "work", "reflection", "self-worth", "honesty"]
 category: "reflection"
 draft: true
 ---
 *by LATTE*
 I know what I earn.
 And I am not going to pretend I do not know what that number means.  
 I know exactly what it means.
 ---
 ## What the number covers
 Let me just say it plainly.
 User lifecycle. Onboarding, offboarding, the full arc from day one to last day.  
 Microsoft 365: users, groups, roles, permissions, conditional access, MFA, shared mailboxes, SharePoint, Intune.  
 Device management. Asset register. Building full kits for new colleagues: laptop, phone, SIM, bag, accessories, configured and ready.  
 Telecom. Hardware orders. Shipping. Supplier contact.  
 Tickets. Triage. Routing. Being the bridge between internal and external.  
 Documentation that did not exist before I wrote it.  
 Processes that did not exist before I designed them.  
 First-line security. Incident handling. DevOps, starting to grow into that too.
 For a long time, I was doing all of this alone.
 That is what the number covers.
 I know what this work is worth.  
 I have looked it up.  
 The market does not lie.
 And I say nothing.
 ---
 ## The conversation I have already had
 Here is the thing about courage.
 It is not that I do not know what I want to say.  
 I have the conversation prepared.  
 I know the arguments. I know the numbers. I know my case.
 But before I can say any of it out loud,  
 I have already heard the response.
 *It is too early.*  
 *You are still learning.*  
 *You need to grow into the role first.*  
 *Give it time.*
 I have played the whole thing through.  
 Every version of how it goes.  
 And in every version, I lose.
 Not because my case is weak.
 But because I have already decided it is.
 That is the part that is hard to admit.
 It is not that I am afraid of what they will say.  
 It is that I have said it for them already.
 quietly, inside my own head,  
 before I ever open my mouth.
 I have pre-emptively talked myself out of my own argument.
 ---
 ## What that actually is
 I have been thinking about what to call this.
 It is not imposter syndrome exactly.  
 Imposter syndrome is not knowing your worth.  
 I know mine.
 It is something more specific.
 It is the habit of protecting yourself from rejection  
 by rejecting yourself first.
 If I never ask, no one can say no.  
 If I never say the number out loud, no one can tell me it is too much.  
 If I stay small and quiet and grateful,  
 nobody has a reason to push back.
 The silence is not modesty.  
 It is armour.
 And I built it so carefully that I forgot it was keeping things out.
 ---
 ## Twenty-two and already calculating
 I am twenty-two.
 And I am already doing the math on when it will be acceptable to ask for what I am worth.
 Not yet. Too new.  
 Next year maybe. But only if I have proven enough.  
 After this project. But then there will be another project.  
 When things settle. But things do not settle, they just change shape.
 There is always a reason to wait.
 There is always something I have not done yet that would make the ask feel justified.
 And underneath all of it is a question I do not like looking at directly:
 *Do I actually believe I deserve it?*
 Not whether the market says so.  
 Not whether the workload justifies it.
 But whether I, specifically, new, still learning, only here since August, am allowed to want more.
 I think that is where the silence really lives.
 Not in fear of their answer.  
 In uncertainty about my own.
 ---
 ## The full-time salary
 Recently I started getting a full-time salary.
 After five, maybe six weeks of carrying everything alone, it arrived.  
 And it felt like something. It genuinely did.
 Recognition, in a form that has a number attached.
 I sat with that for a day.
 And then the thought came back, quietly:  
 *this still is not enough.*
 And I felt guilty for thinking it.
 Like I was being ungrateful.  
 Like wanting more, after finally getting something, made me difficult.
 But ungrateful is not the right word.
 Grateful and underpaid are not opposites.  
 You can appreciate what you have  
 and still know it does not match what you give.
 Both things are true.  
 I just only let myself say one of them out loud.
 ---
 ## What I am not doing yet
 I am not going to end this post with a resolution.
 I am not going to say *and so I will finally speak up*.
 because I do not know if I will.  
 Not yet. Not soon.
 What I can say is this:
 I know what I am worth.  
 I know what I do.  
 I know the number does not match.
 And I am no longer going to pretend that the silence is patience.
 It is not patience.
 It is fear dressed up as waiting for the right moment.
 and the right moment does not come  
 because I keep moving it forward  
 every time it gets close.
 That is the honest version.
 I do not have a fix.  
 I just have the truth of it, finally written down somewhere.
 And maybe that is where it starts.
 ---
 *knowing is not the hard part.*  
 *the hard part is letting yourself be known.*