Something Interesting Is Happening

This morning I was standing at my desk with a mug of English breakfast tea.
Lots of milk.

Stromps was investigating something extremely suspicious on the curtain.

Possibly a spider.
Possibly a portal.

And I was thinking about work.

Which is interesting because my occipital neuralgia is still very much A Thing. Pain has a way of dominating the day. And yet lately I’ve been ending workdays with a strange thought:

That was a good day.

Which makes me curious.

Because curiosity usually means there’s something to learn.

The change happened around the time I became Technical Lead for my group at Qualcomm.

Same company.
Same team.
Mostly the same work.

But something shifted.

And I’m trying to figure out what.

The other day I did a little experiment.

I asked myself what actually happens on a “good” workday.

Not tasks.

Moments.

Small moments where something clicks.

And I noticed something interesting.

Almost all of them involve a conversation.

Someone describing a project.

Someone explaining a challenge.

Someone working through a problem out loud.

Which made me wonder.

What exactly am I enjoying in those moments?

Because it’s clearly not just writing code.

And it’s not meetings either.

Meetings are just meetings.

But sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, something happens.

A pattern appears.

And suddenly the system makes sense.

Which makes me suspect there’s something else going on here.

Something about how my brain interacts with systems.

And people.

And the space in between them.

I’m not entirely sure yet.

But I think it might explain why work has been strangely joyful lately.

Even with a rebellious occipital nerve.