The Resistance

I’ve had Drake’s The Resistance on repeat for years without really listening to it. It was just a song I liked.

Lately it hits different. In the last verse, a girl tells him she misses the old him, and he starts asking himself what changed. When he stopped showing up the way he used to.

Funny how you can hear a song a hundred times and only understand it once life gives you the context.

Last week I wrote about going eleven months without a real break. That post was about what the pace cost me. This one is about the part I left out: what it cost the people around me.

The pursuit

I’ve always wanted more. More knowledge, more responsibility, more things to build. I hit a goal and give it a day before I’m already looking at the next one.

University trained that into me. Classes, NACSS, certs, applications, a deadline always around the corner. I liked it. I still do.

But somewhere along the way, being busy started to feel the same as making progress. I didn’t notice how much of who I am was tied to that until recently.

The people I keep meaning to get back to

That part about missing the old him is what gets me.

My relationship hasn’t been immune. There have been stretches where work and everything else meant my girlfriend didn’t get the attention she deserves. Sometimes it’s the hours. Sometimes I’m right there, but my head is somewhere else. Sometimes I fully plan to make time, and then the day is just gone.

There’s a version of that middle one in my line of work: a server that answers every ping and looks healthy on the dashboard, but drops every real request that reaches it. Up, but not available. I’ve been that server more often than I’d like to admit.

Friendships too. People I genuinely value, and I’m terrible at keeping in touch. Catch-ups get pushed. Messages sit on read for days.

The uncomfortable part is that I never stopped caring. I just didn’t always show it. Caring about someone isn’t the same as them feeling cared for.

Good intentions don’t count if nobody feels them.

The cost of becoming

I think there’s a kind of ambition that makes you permanently unavailable. Not because you’re doing something incredible every second, but because your mind is always somewhere else.

I can finish a long workday and still feel guilty about the projects I didn’t touch. I can have a free weekend and feel like I’m falling behind.

And the people around me don’t experience my ambition as goals on a list. They experience the cancelled plans. The late replies. The missed calls. The times I just wasn’t there.

I hadn’t looked at it from their side before.

An unfamiliar kind of loneliness

Growing up also means your priorities shift. You start thinking about your career, money, where you want to be in five years, and some of those thoughts don’t have anywhere to go.

I don’t want to call that outgrowing people. That’s the easy, slightly arrogant explanation. Everyone is fighting their own battles.

The truth is simpler. Relationships take effort, and history alone doesn’t keep them alive. You can be friends with someone for years and slowly turn into strangers if nobody reaches out.

Same with love. It’s not just feeling it. It’s showing up, making time, noticing the small things.

I’m still learning that.

The resistance

“The other day Alyssa told me she missed the old me
Which made me question when I went missing”

Drake, The Resistance

Maybe that’s what I’m finally hearing in the song. The resistance isn’t always something outside you. Sometimes it’s two things you really want, pulling in opposite directions.

I want a career that matters. I want to build things, be financially free, and chase opportunities beyond where I am right now.

I also want to be a present partner. Friends I actually see. Time with the people I love where I’m not quietly calculating what else I could be doing.

I don’t think those should have to compete. I just haven’t figured out how to stop making them.

For a long time I measured progress in grades, certs, projects and titles. Those still matter, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But there’s another measure I’ve been ignoring: whether the people closest to me actually get to experience the person I’m working so hard to become.

Still becoming

No neat ending here.

I’m still ambitious, and the list of things I want to do is only getting longer. I also know I haven’t balanced it well. There are conversations I should have had sooner and people I should have shown up for more.

I don’t want to spend the next few years becoming impressive on paper and unavailable in real life.

If someone’s name came to mind while you were reading this, that’s probably the message to send today. It doesn’t need to be a long one. “I’ve been thinking about you” is enough.

Still becoming. Just trying to bring my people with me.