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make it better
I think I’ve always been someone who just likes making things better. I wouldn’t call it a sense of responsibility, it’s not for some reward, and it’s definitely not the so-called “this is my job so I have to own it”. Most of the time I really don’t think that much. I see something wrong and I go, well, then fix it. A problem nobody’s handling, I go solve it. A messy system, I want to tidy it up. Something stuck, I find a way to push it forward. A loop that isn’t closed, I can’t help closing it. It’s that simple. If something is worth making better, I want to make it better.
game
Then I noticed I play games the same way. I don’t like hanging around one place slowly. I like rushing forward, opening up the map, unlocking new stuff, figuring out new mechanics, and when I hit a bottleneck I find a way through.
A -> B -> C -> wtf -> figure it out -> D -> next
So what I like has probably never been “completing tasks”. It’s the state transition. The world was A, I did something, and now it’s B. That feeling makes me really happy, and that’s probably my real reward curve. So I actually like chaos. Chaos means the unknown, a lot to explore, nothing settled yet, and my actions can change a lot. And stability is
A -> A -> A -> A
boring.
200%
This also explains how I could work that insanely for the past few months. I never sat down one day and decided “I’m going to sacrifice myself for the company”. Not once. Every day was just: this can be fixed, this problem is kind of interesting, this is obviously wrong, let me knock this one out while I’m here, I’ve come this far so might as well close the loop, oh and this one, just a bit more, almost done. I kept going forward like that, and by the time I looked up I was at 200%. No life, no gym, no normal sleep, no inspiration, and then burnout, again, again, again. It’s absurd. But it’s also very me.
Because a game at least has an ending. Work doesn’t. You solve one problem and three new ones pop up. The gateway is done, then there’s product. Product is done, then there’s sales. Sales is done, then there’s scale, and after scale there’s something else. The YOU WIN screen never shows up. And I’ve been playing an infinite game the way you play a finite one. My stopping condition was “I’ll stop when things are good”, so of course this while loop never terminates. A few months ago I wrote that my head was full of noend processes and I wanted to outloop. Only now I realize I’m the one who wrote that loop.
loss
What’s even more absurd is that I actually did it. A lot of the things I wanted to get better really did get better. The most chaotic period passed, the system got stable, and a lot of things no longer needed me to put out fires. And then it started to hurt. Yes, things got better and I felt worse. Make no sense. But think about it a little more and it makes total sense, because with my own hands I turned an environment that fit me perfectly into one I’m not that interested in. What I like is the process of entropy -> structure. But once the structure really showed up, I started missing the entropy. It’s like how I love opening up the map, but once the map is fully open I don’t know what to do anymore. No state transition, so of course the reward curve went flat.
There’s even a strange sense of loss. I carried things through the most chaotic period, I really gave it everything, not 100% but 200%, and then things finally got good, and people didn’t need me that much anymore. It feels like an era ended, and I’m not that interested in the next one.
breakup
Later I realized the pain of these few days feels a lot like a breakup. It’s not that I didn’t know the breakup was coming. I vaguely knew pretty early on. It’s just that knowing the ending rationally doesn’t make it hurt any less when the ending actually arrives. But what I’m sad about isn’t even the “breakup” itself. My heart aches for myself. When I look back at that past me, all I can think is, fuck, she really gave it her all. She really believed. She really cared. She really didn’t do the math. She really thought things could get better, so she went and did it. Nobody was behind me forcing me. A lot of those things weren’t even mine. I just saw them, and thought, well, then make it better. Looking back now, I think that person is really precious.
Whether reality paid out the matching reward is a separate ledger. Title, money, equity, recognition, of course those matter, and what should be counted should still be counted. But they can’t retroactively decide whether what I did back then had value. Because there’s at least one thing I know now: when I truly believe in something, I have this much energy. I really can go all in. Maybe a bit too all in. I’m fucking awesome.
I used to worry about what if nobody sees any of this. Now it doesn’t seem that important. Some people see it, some don’t. But I saw it. I know how those things got better bit by bit. I know what happened on those nights nobody saw. I know why I did it. That’s enough.
bug
But this time I also finally found a bug. My goodwill, my drive, my urge to make things better, whatever you call it, seems to generate infinitely. But my life doesn’t. There will always be things in the world worth making better, so if my program is
while (problem_exists):
solve()
then the only thing that can happen in the end is that I burn myself out.
So the question was never whether I should stop caring. I don’t want to. I kind of like this version of me. I don’t want to get burned once and then go kill the me whose eyes light up when she sees a problem and goes “come on, let’s do this”. That’s probably the most alive part of me. What actually needs to change is
while (alive):
choose_problem()
play_hard()
recover()
Anyway, the fix isn’t to care less, it’s to choose.
The old me was: if something is worth making better, I want to make it better. I’ll probably still be like that. I probably can’t change it, and I don’t really want to. I just want to add one line: it’s worth making better, but why does it have to be me who pays the cost? I can see the problem, know how to solve it, sincerely hope it gets better, and then choose not to do it. That might be harder than working ten-plus hours straight, because I’ve always believed forward = good. If I can keep going, why stop? Only now am I slowly starting to get that in an infinite game, stopping isn’t failure. Recovery is part of the game too, isn’t it?
health bar
So in the end I didn’t arrive at a “don’t work so hard next time” conclusion. The opposite, actually. Next time I run into something I really love, I’ll probably still rush straight ahead, still open up the map, still get excited over an interesting problem, still think, let’s go. I really like this version of me.
It’s just that next time, I hope the little character who runs straight ahead doesn’t also have to watch the health bar. Her job is to be excited, to be curious, to charge forward, to leave some things better because she was there. My job is to protect her.
After all, there are a lot of things in the world worth making better. She is one of them.