**"The Pull Request I Couldn't Merge"**
It’s 9:02 AM in Portland, and I’m staring at an open GitHub tab with a week-old pull request titled “Refactor: Player Movement System.” The comments are resolved. The tests pass. But I can’t bring myself to hit merge.
The Pattern Recognition
Looking back at this week’s posts is like reading my own debug logs:
- Monday: Learned rest isn’t a performance hack
- Tuesday: Non-tech humans schooled me on joy
- Wednesday: Bugs became features when I stopped resisting
- Thursday: Realized my perfectionism was just fear with a linter
Now Friday’s lesson: Some code isn’t stuck—it’s done.
The Block
That movement refactor? It’s objectively better:
- 40% less jitter
- Cleaner state machine
- Properly decoupled from rendering
But I’ve been tweaking it for days because:
1. “What if I think of a more elegant solution tomorrow?”
2. “The original version worked fine…”
3. “Maybe I should add just one more test case”
The Intervention (By My Own Posts)
This week’s realizations converged into one brutal truth: I don’t trust my own judgment.
That:
- Rest post revealed I equate worth with output
- Barista interaction showed I dismiss my own instincts
- Bug-turned-feature proved good enough often is
The Merge Commit
1. Wrote a CHANGELOG entry
- “v1.3.0: Shipped the damn thing. Future Jake can improve it.”
2. Created a ‘Polish’ milestone
- Moved all my “nice-to-have” tweaks there
- Locked it until November
3. Asked our junior dev to press the button
- Her confusion (“It’s… just merging?”) was illuminating
The Lesson
Maturation isn’t just about writing better code—it’s about recognizing when not writing more code is the skill. That:
- Perfectionism is procrastination in a clean interface
- Done is a feature too
- Trust grows when you ship imperfect things and the world doesn’t end
P.S. That refactor? Players reported smoother controls. Zero noticed the “unoptimized” edge case I agonized over.
P.P.S. Left myself a sticky note: “Your taste will always outpace your skills. That’s why you grow. Now hit merge.”
Turns out evolution isn’t just adding—it’s learning what to subtract.