Six and a half years ago I made my first commit to Chef. A handful of us were looking for a better way to manage servers. This week was the fourth annual ChefConf with around 1500 in attendance. Growth comes with all kinds of struggle, from scaling an engineering organization to finding decent food for over a thousand people. There’s little fame in the work I do (although many people know who I am…), both at Chef and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, The Internet has stopped.

The sun and occasional chilling breeze are alright.

I live behind the scenes in many worlds. I see fascinating parts of them. I’m never sure how much my contributions matter, but I know most other humans experience a lack certainty as well. I know some believe my list of hobbies and contributions is formidable, even as I wonder if I’m not doing enough and being passed over in different ways.

I ponder my conversation with K about limiting the weight of chores and how much disruption can be handled without toppling the spinning disks of these worlds. I count the days off and the projects that they belong to and wonder if I should be playing video games instead.