I had fourteen days off and spent seven of them away from home. I got back today, and tomorrow I go back to work. The trip was good, but the first week of the holidays was not what I expected, and it is the reason I am writing this.
The first week I could not slow down. I had nothing to do, nowhere to be, and I still kept filling the days. I would find something to tinker with, something to fix, something to build. It frustrated me, because I could not understand why I could not simply do nothing. Resting felt like wasting time, and that thought would not leave me alone.
At some point I stopped fighting it. I let myself be carried along instead of trying to control every hour. That is when things changed. I found myself much more aligned, much more at peace with myself. Not because I was doing more, but because I had stopped forcing it.
That is what made me think about why I build things in my free time.
Building is how I learn
When I was younger I thought I learned by reading. I would collect articles and bookmarks, tell myself I was getting better, and then forget most of it. That was accumulation, not learning.
The things I actually know, the ones I could defend in a conversation, are the ones I built. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to see if I could. There is a difference between knowing that something works and knowing why it works, and building is the only way I have found to cross that gap.
The satisfaction of making something
There is a particular kind of satisfaction in taking an idea and turning it into something that works. It does not have to be big. A small script, a page, a tool that saves you five minutes. The point is that you made it, and it did not exist before you sat down to build it.
That feeling is different from the work I do because I have to. At work the stakes are real, the deadlines are real, and the reasons are often someone else’s. The work I choose to do in my free time has no deadline and no owner except me. I build it because I want to, and that changes everything.
Doing things because you want to, not because you must
This is the part that took me the longest to understand. Doing something because you want to and doing something because you must are not the same thing, even when the task looks identical. The mental load is completely different.
When you do something because you must, part of your mind is always negotiating with it. You are weighing it against everything else you could be doing, and that friction wears you down. When you do something because you want to, there is no negotiation. You just do it, and it does not cost you the same way.
I think that is why the first week of my holidays was so hard. I had spent so long doing things because I had to that I had forgotten what it felt like to do things because I wanted to. My brain kept reaching for the next obligation, and when there was none, it did not know what to do with itself.
What I took away
The second week of my holidays taught me more than the first. Once I stopped forcing it, I remembered what it felt like to move at my own pace. I did less, and I felt better. I came back with a clearer head than I have had in a long time.
I am not going to pretend I have solved this. I still reach for the next thing to build, and I still have to remind myself that rest is not wasted time. But I understand it better now. The work I choose is not a burden. It is the work I do because I want to, and that is a different thing entirely.
If you are an engineer and you have been meaning to build something, do not wait for the perfect setup. Start with something small, and build it because you want to, not because you think you should. The project itself matters less than the fact that you chose it.