The truth

The other day, Pau asked Marc and me whether we would like to spend less time working and more time reading. I hesitated.

I love reading, I truly do. I have ever since I can remember. When I was seven, my mum started reading the first Harry Potter book to me, and by the time I was eight, I had read the three other available books and The Lord of the Rings in one fell swoop. At seventeen, I started reading essays, which have been my main thing ever since. I’ve always been afraid of “just reading,” though, of being one of those people who talks about things but does not do. Even today, this is one of my biggest imposter syndrome paranoias.

So, as much as I love reading, my work gives me the best tool to face reality and its messiness. I start thinking of building something and anticipate it might fail in X or Y ways. I build it, and realize the real challenge is Z. I release it (and if I’m lucky and people use it) and find out I missed four different edge cases. It’s the best way to keep yourself in check from thinking you are entirely right at any point. You just know you’re not, and you hope that your model of reality gets better with each update. (You also get better at assumptions with time, of course—the meta-cycle.)