chasing the high

Jun 23, 2026

i used to think i build because i love building. that's mostly true. but the more honest version is that there's an engine running underneath it, and the engine doesn't actually care what it runs on. it just wants the hit.

i wrote this once without realising what i was admitting. in a flat phase last year i said it plainly: some days i'd build small apps just to feel something. i thought that was a sweet line about restlessness. it's not. it's the whole thing. i wasn't building because the app mattered. i was building because i wanted the feeling, and an app was just the version of the needle i could explain to people.

the dangerous high gets applause

here's the part that's a little scary once you see it.

the chase doesn't care where it lands. a game, a build, a person, it's all the same socket to it. (a couple of those i've since unplugged for good.) i happened to plug mine into building, which is the respectable one, the one you're allowed to put on a resume. but it's the same current underneath. point me at a worse outlet and i don't become a worse person, i become the same person with a worse problem.

the most dangerous version of the chase is the one everyone around you is clapping for.

nobody stages an intervention over a shipping streak. nobody pulls you aside about a green commit graph. the exact compulsion that would have people worried if it were pointed anywhere else gets you a founder badge and a pat on the back. it's the same animal. it just changed into a hoodie that says productive instead of one that says can't stop.

i know this one from the inside. the day job that's meant to be enough on its own, and never quite is, so the thing i actually want to learn keeps getting pushed into the nights and the weekends. the twelve-hour evenings stacked on top of it. the five nights in a row fixing builds on pizza and too much energy. the way an empty saturday morning feels like withdrawal until an idea shows up to occupy me. some of that is genuine love for the work. but some of it is just the engine, hungry, grabbing whatever's nearby. for years i called all of it grit because grit is the flattering word.

the shape you can't see from inside

once you can see your own loop, you start seeing everyone's.

most people are running the same handful of days over and over without clocking it. the same argument with a different face. the same craving wearing a new excuse. it's hard to catch because from the inside a loop just looks like your life. this isn't me looking down at anyone. i only know the corners of mine because i've gone around it enough times to start recognizing them.

mine is build, ship, the hit, the comedown, build again, faster, to outrun the comedown. naming it doesn't free me from it. naming it just turns the lights on. but you genuinely cannot step out of a loop you keep insisting isn't there, so the lights are the whole first move.

the wonder is in the small things

here's the part i don't want to lose in all this. for all the noise the loop makes, every so often it leaves something behind that outlasts it, a thing that keeps running long after the high that built it has worn off.

some of what i build runs without me. fanpit's been putting on events for months now with no major code changes, brands and artists and real crowds, somewhere around 20L of tickets moved through it, most of that while i was off at the day job and a dozen other things. i'll catch a notification on slack that a new event got created. a thing i made just keeps going, quietly earning its keep, without me hunched over it.

i spend almost all my time in the dull middle of building and forget the edges of it are kind of holy. i'd like to feel a little of that wonder on purpose, without needing to be wrecked or sleepless to notice it.

the rush isn't the problem

this is the part i actually keep.

the feeling is real. the rush when a thing goes live. the surreal hit of watching a friend use something i made. the late-night room nobody wants to leave. i don't want to kill that. it's the best part of being alive, and i'm not pretending otherwise.

what i want to kill is the verdict i staple onto the feeling. that the rush means i'm finally worth something. that the next launch is the one that fills the hole. that a slow week means i'm slipping. none of that came from the feeling, i bolted it on after. an honest rush, run through a performance review i never agreed to sit.

keep the rush. lose the scorecard. that's the whole edit.

so i've started watching for my own tells instead. whether i'm building with people or hiding inside the building. whether an empty saturday feels like rest or like something i need to fix immediately. whether i can sit through a whole dinner without my hand drifting to my laptop. when i catch myself wired at 4am on no sleep, ten tabs deep, dead certain i've cracked something, i used to take that as proof i was onto something. now i recognize it for what it is: the engine redlining with nothing real in the tank.

so

i'm not going to stop chasing. i'm going to keep building, keep sidequesting, keep saying yes to things that scare me a little, because the high is real and it makes life feel real.

i just want to do it with the lights on now. knowing what the engine is. knowing it'll happily burn anything i feed it, the good stuff and the stuff that wrecks me, with the exact same enthusiasm. the work doesn't change much. what changes is that i finally know what's actually driving it.