Messy Code, Spinning Mind

I'm writing this the day before we go on vacation, and as usual, that comes with a low hum of anxiety. It’s not that I don’t want the break - I do - but stepping away from routine always leaves me a little unsteady.

What makes it worse is leaving work in a messy state. As a software engineer, I’m used to structure, control, and things either working or not. But this week, the code I’ve been working on has felt tangled, unfinished. Two projects, both interdependent, both not quite stable. I could feel the tension building in my body. The more I tried to clean things up, the more my mind began to spin.

The Inner Spiral

Code is unforgiving. It either works or it doesn’t. And for those of us who tend toward perfectionism, that precision can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s satisfying—elegant logic, clean structure, things clicking into place. On the other hand, it’s a trap.

There’s always something more to clean up. A variable to rename. A logic branch to refactor. A comment to clarify. You can easily lose hours, even days, trying to perfect something that was already functional. That’s where I found myself this week—chasing clarity, chasing control.

But messy code doesn’t just look bad—it feels bad. It clouds your mental map of the problem. You start to lose your bearings. Things break. You slip into fire-fighting mode. And suddenly, you're not solving problems thoughtfully—you’re scrambling to keep the wheels on.

Add to that the pressure from leadership to go faster, ship more, and keep momentum high, and it becomes a cocktail of stress that’s hard to metabolize. How do you relax when the thing you’re building feels like it’s held together with duct tape and faith.

Maybe you’ve felt it too—in work, parenting, relationships, health. Life starts to get messy, you feel control slipping through your fingers, and that creeping sense of fear rises in your chest. What if I drop the ball? What if everything falls apart?

Coping and Numbing

When the pressure hits a breaking point, I don’t usually explode—I slip. I find myself in the kitchen, grazing for comfort food. Or I pick up my phone and scroll endlessly, eyes glazed over, tapping through bits of trivia and noise. It's not conscious. It's not intentional. It's just... escape.

These little habits—eating, doomscrolling—have a way of soothing the sharp edge of fear. They take the volume down on the anxiety, at least for a moment. In their own way, they work. But only temporarily.

The problem is, they don’t really bring rest. They numb. They soften the panic but leave behind a kind of heaviness—a dull, lingering fog. I go from being a firefighter, urgently reacting to everything, to someone just floating, detached from my body and barely present in my own life.

Stephen Covey describes this as cycling between Quadrant 1 (highly important, highly urgent tasks) and Quadrant 4 (not important, not urgent tasks). It’s a retreat from panic into unconscious living—a kind of survival rhythm that skips over true rest and lands in distraction.

And I can feel it: I’m not refreshed. I’m not grounded. I’m just somewhere else, waiting for the storm to pass.

Breaking the Spiral

Earlier today, I caught myself sitting in my chair, ruminating about work. My body was still, but my mind was sprinting in circles. The wheels were spinning fast—but I wasn’t getting anywhere. Just round and round: The code’s not clean. Things will break. I’ll disappoint people. I’ll come back to a mess. On and on.

In that moment, I remembered the cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) work I’ve done with my therapist. I’ve learned how to slow down and map out what’s actually happening under the surface—what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, and what those thoughts are making me do.

So I decided to walk through the process using ChatGPT as a kind of journaling companion. It’s a tool I’ve come to value—not because it gives me answers, but because it helps me ask better questions.

Here’s what I uncovered:

• Situation: I’m going on vacation, but I feel like I’m leaving things messy and unfinished at work.

• Automatic Thoughts: “It’s broken. It has to be perfect. I’ll disappoint someone.”

• Emotions: Anxiety, tension, mental spinning, pulling away from the world around me.

• Behaviors: Overworking, then coping through food and doomscrolling.

• Underlying Belief: “If I lose control, I lose value.”

• Reframe: Messy code is part of the process. Life is messy. Perfection is a trap. Progress is the goal. If I can ask, “Did I make the world a little better today?”—that’s enough.

Just naming these things brought a sense of calm. Like my inner system realized: Oh. There’s a way forward that doesn’t involve panic.

Choosing Presence

Once I had named the spiral, the next question came naturally:

“Okay—what can I do right now?”

Not in the abstract. Not someday. Now.

What would actually quiet my mind and help me return to myself?

So I made a list.

• Take a shower.

• Pack clothes for the trip.

• Go for a walk.

• Do some breathwork.

Nothing heroic. Just small, clear steps to reconnect with my body and prepare for rest.

Then I gave myself permission to sit down at my work computer—but not to code. I set a 30-minute timer and let myself dump everything out: all the tasks, the half-finished ideas, the worries about the codebase. I wrote a second to-do list—this one for after vacation.

And strangely, that was enough. My mind, which had been trying to hold everything like a juggler on a tightrope, finally let go. It didn’t need to keep cycling because the plan was written. The tasks had a home. I didn’t need to carry them anymore.

Mind Like Water

So what changed?

On the outside—nothing.

The code is still just as messy. The projects are still in a half-finished state. The external environment is exactly the same as it was before.

But inside, everything feels different.

The Daoist tradition speaks of having a mind like water—a state of inner clarity and stillness that reflects what is, without distortion or panic. Water doesn’t resist. It adapts. It flows around obstacles. It moves when needed and rests when stillness is called for.

That’s what this practice gave me today. Not control over my work—but freedom from the fear of losing control. When I let go, my mind began to relax. The world no longer felt like something I had to keep from collapsing. I could be in the mess without becoming it.

Techniques like CBT and to-do lists helped me externalize what had been swirling inside. But more than that, I practiced turning toward my inner voice—the anxious part of me—not with judgment, but with compassion. I asked it questions. I listened. I let it speak.

And that’s how trust is built inside. That’s how the frightened inner child learns it’s safe to stop gripping so tightly. Not through domination, but through presence.

I wrote this the day before we went on vacation and am publishing it now. The code is still messy. But now, so is life. And that’s okay.

No scale this week.