Interview at 3:00 PM. Big O cards on the desk, a problem archive on the screen. I will reverse a linked list. I will talk about trees. I will estimate the complexities and smile.
The first question in my head is different. When did I last walk a graph depth-first in a living product? In twenty years, never, if you do not count university labs.
The second: why I need this job. To pay for life now and build my own things later. The mobile apps are almost ready, the Godot game grows in the evenings, the move into gamedev is a long route, and the bills arrive on schedule.
While I run the formulas, another system turns. Into one day I have to fit a full-time job, progress on my own stuff, a walk, a workout, therapy, people, and at least one night of real sleep. The hours add up neatly and leave a remainder every time.
On a napkin
I am not dropping my projects. I just stopped believing that freedom pays its own bills. The management company does not take mobile product concepts as payment for the utilities.
On a napkin it looks clean. Daytime, a stable job, money on time. Evening, mobile apps and Godot. Body and head, or it overheats. People not as leftovers. Sleep like a call: it sits on the calendar.
Colored blocks appear. The puzzle looks assembled. Then one call, two urgent bugs, a three-hour meeting. The tower falls.
And in parallel I have to shine at interviews. List reversal on the board, a distributed system in fifteen minutes, the fine points of a binary search tree. Otherwise there is no offer.
I can play this game and sometimes I win. Every time I am surprised how far the ritual stands from the work. Like choosing a surgeon by paper cranes. The hands look right. The correlation is doubtful.
Health
For fifteen years I put health after the release. First work, then projects, then more work, then a walk.
Without it everything drops at once, usually on the day the team needs me. Body and head are not a server. I tried sudo reboot. It does not take.
A walk where I look around instead of debugging in my head. A bar or yoga, but not "from Monday." Seven or eight hours of sleep. Experiments with "five is enough" turn into interest on a debt.
Ten minutes of quiet. Therapy as a review of my own head, not as weakness. Half an hour outside is not stolen from the startup. Tomorrow the brain otherwise only imitates thought.
In a day that already holds eight hours of someone else's work and three of mine, none of this fits by itself. I will have to choose.
Evening
A perfect tetris will not assemble. Not even on four monitors.
What stays: work, so there is money. My own projects, so there is movement. Health, so there is force left. People, so there is a reason. The rest is optional.
A normal evening looks like this.
10:00 PM. I think: I will stay fifteen minutes and finish the mechanic.
10:05 PM. My girlfriend suggests a film.
11:30 PM. The refactor is done, the feature is not, the film is cancelled, the guilt is in place.
I chose the illusion of control over the code instead of the person in the room. That is not a mood. It is a choice, and you can see it on the clock.
11:47 AM
It is 11:47 AM. The interview is in three hours.
They will ask about algorithms, I will answer. About experience, I will tell it. About "why us" I will say careful words about the product and the team. That is how the ritual is built.
Inside it is shorter. I need money now so I can build my own later and not lose the people next to me. Ninety percent of startups do not take off. A stable job gives me the right to experiment without looking into an empty pocket every day.
I am writing this in the morning, before the interview. In the evening I may add an ending. Or I may not, if I keep the answer.
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