Building What Matters

Alice sat in front of her laptop, fingers paused above the keyboard. Her code editor was open, a project deadline blinking in the back of her mind, but she couldn’t shake the heaviness in her chest. Not sadness exactly, more like a quiet resistance. A question, half-formed: What am I really building?

She had done everything right. Studied. Built. Shipped products. Led teams. Learned new tools. AI, full-stack, architecture, system thinking. She had kept up, stayed sharp, stayed useful.

And yet, it felt like she was disappearing.

Not from her career. From herself.

Because every night, after Slack shut down and the Zoom calls ended, she painted. Or she wrote. She told stories about women. Not perfect ones. Not empowered in the obvious ways. Women who were chaotic, sensitive, stuck, strange. Women who felt like her. Or who she was afraid to become. Or maybe it already was.

She didn’t talk about that part much. Not in meetings. Not online. It didn’t fit anywhere. It wasn’t relevant.

But lately, she had started wondering if the people she really wanted to meet, the collaborators, the co-creators, the ones who wouldn’t find her too much, maybe they were wondering the same thing. Maybe they were looking, too, but not finding her. Because she wasn’t showing up as herself. Not fully.

They were probably out there. Other women, or men, or something in between. Not afraid of emotions. Not afraid to build something that doesn’t follow the rules. People who could code and feel. Who weren’t obsessed with titles or launches, but with truth. With making things that matter.

People who didn’t need to be managed, but needed to be met.

So she opened a blank page, and she started writing. Not code this time. A message. A signal.

Not for everyone. Just for the ones like her.