Unapproved Plan Mutation
Runtime Edits Applied
It all started well, which is usually how the trouble sneaks in. We negotiated a play date like adults. I would bike, she would hike. Two parallel lines, same destination. University Mountain in late winter light, snow packed just enough to behave, the valley opening up below like it always does when you earn it. It worked. Or at least it looked like it did. At the top, things peaked at OK. Not great, not magic, just that quiet, shared relief where nobody has to fix anything yet.
On the way home, the plan changed. Not in a dramatic way. Worse. In a casual, sliding-doors way. Good Food Store quietly rerouted to Pattee Creek Market. I remember saying, very calmly in my head and barely out loud, “I thought we were going to Good Food Store.” By the time the words landed, it was already too late. The rails were gone. The map no longer matched the road. Nero-divergent meltdown is not a metaphor, it is a system failure, alarms blaring after the exit has passed.
The mountain stayed beautiful and completely unhelpful. Later, work broke too. A Confluence page imploded and demanded to be rewritten, fully, right now, like it had been waiting its turn. Ten PM crept in. I pounded the keyboard, threw tantrums at inanimate … er … AI’s, negotiated with reality and lost. She went to bed and closed the door. I stayed awake with the ceiling and every bad edit I could have made. Eventually, sometime after exhaustion won, I slept.
It did not turn out fine. It turned out survived. The mountain still counted for something, even if it could not save the rest of the day. It is not resilience or growth or gratitude. It is just noticing exactly where things went sideways, filing that away, and knowing that next time, the plan needs stronger guardrails, because the system will absolutely fail again if given the chance.
On This Day
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