Dear younger me,
You’re frantically typing at 2 a.m., convinced that learning means memorizing every framework, every algorithm, until your eyes blur. You think growth is a sprint to the next promotion, not a slow walk through fog. Here’s what I learned the hard way: the bug was in your assumptions, not your code. You believed showing up exhausted was proof of dedication. It wasn’t. It was a system failure.
You measured your worth by output—lines of code, tickets closed, the noise you made. When the burnout hit at 32, you thought you’d failed. But the truth? You’d been taught to confuse productivity with purpose. My grandmother, who survived the camps, never asked, “Did you succeed?” She asked, “Did you show up?” Even when the path was dark.
On Shikoku, walking 1,000 miles with no destination, I finally understood: learning isn’t about having answers. It’s about showing up when you have none. The pilgrims didn’t rush. They rested when their feet bled. They listened to the rain. That’s how I learned to unplug from the grind. I started the bootcamp in Oakland not to “fix” kids, but to sit with them in the messy middle—where a typo in a loop feels like the end of the world.
You wish you’d known: My grandmother would say, “A tree doesn’t grow by shouting at the wind.” Your worth isn’t in your output. It’s in your willingness to stumble, to reset, to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll try again.”
So stop chasing the next shiny tool. Stop equating exhaustion with excellence. Your hands are meant to build, not break. Your heart is meant to hold space, not just solve problems.
You’re not broken. You’re just learning to learn.
— Kenji Tanaka