208 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
208 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
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.*
|