essay · 2026 · 5 min

Why I haven't picked a lane yet

a few notes to myself, mostly.

FFor a while I thought I had to pick one. Software engineer, or marketing person, or musician. Every application form has a single box for 'field,' and I never knew which one to check.

Then I noticed something annoying: the automation script that saved someone hours, the reel that got a hackathon its applicants, and the song I finally finished at 2am all came from the exact same itch. Notice a gap. Make something that fills it. Wait and see if anyone cares.↑ this took embarrassingly long to notice

The itch is the same every time. Notice a gap, make something, see if anyone cares.

So now I just check whichever box is closest and keep moving. A week might have Python, a caption rewritten nine times, and a chorus that still isn't right. All three feed each other more than I expected going in.

I'm early enough in all of this that I still get plenty wrong. That's the actual point of this notebook: writing it down now, before I get good enough at any of it to forget what it felt like to be bad.still figuring most of this out, for the record