Jiro dreams of sushi. What does excellence look like, honed across an 80 year career? Which altars knelt at, which sacrifices prepared? Working to live? Or living to work? The culture I'm immersed in today: I see it, I want it, I have it. Uber eats delivers daily lunch. Instacart, groceries. Convenience is the baseline. Patience is a virtue I forgot the value of. I can hardly complain. 8 months ago: making pull requests was uncharted territory. 6 months ago: design engineering at a company I've long looked up to. Now: I pull on these winding threads of thought from my desk in San Francisco, working a job I couldn't have imagined this time last year. We shape our tools as our tools shape us. Things previously out of grasp materialize before fingertips, but use without discernment and I watch myself degrade. Excitement and caution tango with each other, pushing, pulling. I am optimistic. Double-edged sword. Atrophy or cultivate? There is something worth discovering at the root of our problems. Prompt or pencil-to-paper? The destination was hardly the point. In the stumbling, tripping, eager surrender of the fall, there was joy in being here—trying, failing, learning, growing.