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There's something really satisfying about writing code, and it's often around the moments that feel worst. You're staring at some function. The more intensely you work on it, the less you can keep in your mind. Soon, you can't even remember why you started writing the function, let alone what it's doing. You push harder, and it doesn't help. You feel stupid and definitely not cut out for this.

Yet... a little while later, you're surprised and not surprised at once: you've made it clean and organized and crystal clear to yourself. You test it, and it works.

Or you test it, and it doesn't. And maybe you have no idea, maybe you spend an hour trying to untangle why. Maybe you're at this for two or three hours, sometimes more. And again you feel stupid, absolutely not cut out for this. But you do solve the mystery...

by detective work. Over sudden seconds,

the jigsaw pieces fall into shape. And you realize, with a forgotten sense of recognition, that it isn't a surprise: that's what usually happens, after all.

Wars won and lost skirmishes, slowly the upsets reduce. Most wrenches in clockwork are more interesting than discouraging now. You still enjoy the way code feels when it's spiffy and sparkly and firing on self-tuning cylinders. You can almost tell by looking at it that it works. You see it working under the surface of the screen, in some perpendicular time that looks still.