Are You Living or Just Coping?

Photo by Julius Yls on Unsplash

I was sitting at the kitchen table in my in-laws home when my wife’s 8-year-old nephew climbed up into the chair next to me with his favorite toddler blanket clutched in his arms. He’s got bright blue eyes and is always full of questions.

Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at taking my office with me wherever I go. My laptop was humming with the portable screen partially blocked by the half-full bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper I’d been nursing since I got ready for the day.

He watched as the computer printed lines of log entries on the screen for maybe ten seconds before the inevitable barrage of questions began.

“What are you doing?”

Onscreen was a terminal window full of log entries and a soup of code that still wasn’t working quite right.

“I’m working,” I said.

He nodded.

“What are you working on?” He knelt up on his chair to get a better look at the log-filled screen.

I explained that I was building control software for a dual-axis tracking solar company.

Then he asked another question.

And another.

And another.

He asked about the code. About the logs. About what I was actually doing. How I knew how to do it…