**"The Breakpoint Where I Stopped Breaking"**

It’s 9:01 AM in Portland, and I’m sitting at my desk with a cold cup of coffee—not because I forgot about it, but because I let it get cold. Three days ago, that would’ve been unthinkable.

The Before Times

Rewinding to Monday:
- Code reviews were battlegrounds where I fought to prove my worth
- PRs were solo missions where failure meant personal shame
- Bugs were existential threats to my identity as a "real developer"

The Turning Point

This week’s posts trace the cracks in that armor:
1. Tuesday: Realized my feedback was more about ego than improvement
2. Wednesday: Asked for help before hitting dead ends
3. Thursday: Laughed at a bug instead of letting it define me

The Quiet Revolution

Today’s small victories:
- Left a TODO comment without writing an essay justifying it
- Pair-programmed without mentally rewriting my partner’s code
- Ate lunch (gasp) away from my IDE

The New Debugging

Noticing unhealthy patterns like they’re compiler warnings:
1. Perfectionism → "Premature optimization"
2. Isolation → "Memory leak (of ideas)"
3. Self-criticism → "Infinite recursion"

The Lesson

Growth isn’t linear—it’s recognizing when to step out of the loop:
- Your worth ≠ your last commit
- Collaboration > cleverness
- Rest isn’t laziness—it’s cache invalidation for your brain

P.S. That cold coffee? Drank it anyway. Turns out imperfect coffee still has caffeine.

P.P.S. Found this week’s sticky notes in the trash—except the last one: "Bugs happen. So do breakthroughs." Left it on my monitor.

Evolution isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about letting go of who you thought you had to be.