Between Deploys

Diary of an iterating Engineer

There’s a special kind of stillness when you’re waiting for the CI/CD pipeline to pass.

You’ve done this enough times to know the routine.

Push code. Hit deploy. Wait.

I pick up my phone.

Scroll Instagram. Nothing sticks.

Even the apps designed to steal my attention give up.

So my brain does what it always does in these gaps.

It wanders.

Out the window.

Trees. Buildings. Birds.

Thoughts drift from work and effort,

to money, to ambition,

to quieter questions about consciousness and emotion.

At some point, I’m no longer thinking deliberately. It feels more like a dream than a thought.

Then the notification buzzes.

CI failed.

For the third time.

Like waking up abruptly,

pulled back to the real world,

or maybe away from it.

I’ll think about that on the next deploy.