Lately I've been going to bed sad.

Not sad sad. Sad like a kid who got called in for dinner in the middle of a game. I've been building things for standups & snacktime at night, little tools and guides and pages, and when it's time to close the laptop I genuinely don't want to. I want to keep going. I want to see if the next thing works.

And somewhere around the third night in a row of that, I realized I know this feeling. I haven't felt it in a long time. The last time it was this strong, I was 11.

The 11-year-old with a website

When I was 11, I absolutely loved building websites. I taught myself how to code from HTML help sites like Funky Chickens (bright pink bubble letters, a whole section just for marquees) and by studying other girls' expage sites to figure out how they did it. If you were one of the underground expage girlies, you already know. If you weren't, picture iframes, link hovers, scrolling marquees, and a lot of very strong opinions about fonts. Not long after, I had my own domain.

I wasn't doing it for anyone. There was no portfolio, no plan, no audience. I just loved the feeling of something existing that didn't exist before I sat down.

So naturally, I built a career in tech

I loved computers. So I went into tech. It made total sense, and it still makes sense when I say it out loud.

I loved technology. I worked in technology. Therefore, I'd followed my interests.

Except those are two completely different things.

For about 15 years, most of my work has been in tech operations: customer operations, escalations, incident management, making processes work better than they did before I got there. It's real work, and I'm good at it. When something breaks at 2am, I'm a good person to have in the room. I've hired people, built teams, and fixed things that were costing companies a lot of money.

But almost all of it has been about operating systems and improving systems. Keeping things running. Making them run better. Very little of it has been about making something that didn't exist before.

The 11-year-old didn't love "technology." She loved building. I'd spent years working in an industry I loved without necessarily doing the work I loved, and I'd never once noticed the gap, because from the outside they look exactly the same.

Good at it isn't the same as lit up by it

I think this is how it happens to a lot of us. You're good at something. People notice you're good at it. You get rewarded for it, and you get handed more of it. Ten years later you have a whole career built on a skill you're genuinely competent at, and you assume the competence is the same thing as fulfillment.

It isn't. Competence is what other people can see. Fulfillment is what you feel at 10:45pm when nobody's watching and you don't want to stop.

The ladder I kept checking

For a long time, I read my lack of fulfillment as a ranking problem.

I'd look at people my age who'd become directors and VPs and feel behind. Like I'd missed a turn somewhere. If I felt unfulfilled, it must be because I hadn't climbed high enough yet, and the answer was obviously to climb faster.

Then I tried a thought experiment. I imagined a version of my life where I supported myself by building a portfolio of digital products: guides, tools, things that help people. No promotions. No title. No next rung.

I expected to feel some loss about that. Some grief for the director title I'd been comparing myself against for years.

I didn't feel any. What I felt was freedom. Excitement. Possibility.

Which made me wonder if I've been measuring my success against a destination I never actually wanted. I'd been checking how high I was on the ladder without ever asking whether I wanted to go where it led.

I spent years feeling inadequate because I hadn't climbed high enough on someone else's ladder, only to realize I might be happiest building the fucking ladder myself.

What I actually love making

It's not just building for the sake of building. The part that lights me up is making something that helps someone.

A career guide that gives someone the words, and the nerve, to ask for what they're worth. A tool that quietly removes one annoying step from someone's day. That moment when a thing I've been fighting with all night finally works and I feel like I've cracked the code.

That's the feeling. That's the 11-year-old.

The honest part

I want to be careful here, because this could easily turn into a post about quitting your job to follow your passion. It's not that.

I don't think corporate careers are a trap. My 15 years in operations taught me how systems break, how people actually behave under pressure, and how to fix things without making a scene. All of that shows up in everything I build now. None of it was wasted.

I'm also not standing on the other side of this with a thriving business to show you. I'm in the middle of it. Loving building something isn't the same as building something valuable, and I know that. Finding the overlap between what excites me, what actually helps people, and what people will pay for is the next challenge, and I haven't solved it.

And not every love needs to become income. Some things are better as the thing you do at night because you want to. But it's worth knowing which thing that is.

If you're feeling a little behind

I'm not going to tell you what your realization is. But here are the questions that got me to mine:

• Do you love your industry, or the work you do in it? Try separating them. You might love healthcare and hate admin. You might love fashion and secretly only love the spreadsheets.
• What did you love doing at 11, specifically? Not the category. The verb. Childhood interests are often accurate about what energizes you, just interpreted way too broadly. (See: me, "computers.")
• Is it competence or energy? What are you good at that drains you? What leaves you weirdly awake?
• Behind compared to what? If you feel like you're falling behind, picture yourself actually arriving at the place you think you're behind on. Notice whether you feel relief or nothing at all.

I don't have the ending to this yet. Right now it's mostly late nights, a lot of half-built things, and the strange relief of finally knowing what that feeling was.

I'll probably go to bed sad again tonight. I'm starting to think that's a good sign.

What did you love doing at 11? Is any of it in your work now? Tell me →