your problems suck, get better ones

three-thirty in the kitchen

Three-thirty in the morning, and I’m standing in a kitchen so clean it looks staged.

Perfectly clean. The counters were wiped down, and the suitcase that had lived in my hallway for seventeen days was finally unpacked. I’d even coiled the phone charger on the floor. Three hours spent building the illusion of a life under control. And it did feel better. My head was clearer.

Then I ran out of things to clean. The application was still open, with the email sitting in my drafts. I’d spent three hours finding productive ways to avoid it.

Cleaning had given me the perfect excuse. I’d traded an application I might fail for a kitchen I knew how to clean.

the promise of done

It started with shoelaces. Seven years old, sitting on the stairs, Mom’s voice pitching higher with each failed attempt. “Over, under, pull it tight, make a bow.” Forty-five minutes later, we’re both crying and she’s saying, “Once you learn this, you’ll never have to think about it again.”

Thirty-two years later, I still have mornings when I stare at my shoes and talk myself through each step.

I learned to think of milestones as things you check off and never revisit.

Graduate college and you’ll have security. I graduated into a job market that had made no such promise.

Find your person and you’ll never be lonely again. Turns out you can feel completely alone while they’re breathing beside you in bed.

I kept buying systems that promised I could finish fixing myself, usually for $47 a month.

I bought all of it. I spent thirty-two years trying to become someone who had finally solved himself. The work left me exhausted and no closer to sending the application.

the mug in the sink

At 4 AM I’m on the kitchen floor, and there’s my coffee mug in the sink. The one I washed three hours ago. Already dirty.

The mug was enough. I’d cleaned it, then used it again. Nothing had gone wrong.

I’d been demanding a personal exemption from change. I wanted the kitchen and my career to stay finished once I fixed them.

back to the cursor

The next morning, I opened the job application again. Technical Project Manager. I’d been turning it over for three months because the work scared me in exactly the right places. My decisions would matter. I’d have to make sense of technical work and get a room of humans moving in the same direction. I’d opened the application fifty times and never submitted it. My drafts folder held a dozen cover letters, each trying to say “synergy” without sounding dead inside.

My finger hovers over the trackpad. Move the cursor to Submit. Click once. Can’t. I can’t fucking click Submit.

Then I start arguing with myself.

What are you really scared of?

Failing. Obviously.

Bullshit. You’ve failed before. You’re still here. What’s really going on?

I think I’m scared of succeeding.

Keep going.

If I get this job, I’d have to stand in front of engineers and convince them I know what I’m doing. I’d have to lead a team when I can barely get myself to the gym. I’d sit in meetings wondering whether everyone could tell I’d just googled “agile methodology” in the bathroom. I’d have problems bigger than the ones I know how to hide inside.

The answer comes back quieter. Those sound like beautiful problems to have.

Beautiful problems. Convincing a room of engineers would mean I had an idea worth defending. Decisions about timelines and budgets would mean my choices carried weight. For the first time, I wanted the problems waiting on the other side of Submit.

problems on the other side

I was going to have problems either way. I could start asking which ones came attached to a life I wanted.

The kitchen will get dirty again, and the thing I mastered at work last year will get replaced by something with a stupider name. Anyone I love can hurt me. Those are costs I accept for having a life I want.

The problems I’d been choosing kept me safe and miserable. The problems behind Submit scared me because I wanted them.

choosing again

Even writing this, I catch myself trying to turn it into a rule. Just choose better problems! There I go again.

Choosing again is the whole job. Every morning I can send the email or reorganize the inbox for the fifteenth time. I can apply or spend another evening asking Google how to know when I’m ready.

I still freeze and organize when I’m scared. Now I catch myself sometimes. On a good day, I stop cleaning and send the email.

The mug was still in the sink, and the application was still open. For once, I knew which problem I wanted.