I Wrote 12 Lines of Code Instead of a Poem—And It Saved My Life

I used to think my job was about optimizing game engines.

Now I know it was about optimizing my soul.

Every morning in my Manhattan apartment, I’d write React components like lyrics—clean, recursive, silent. Every night, I’d run AI-generated poetry on an empty terminal, each line a breath between failures.

They called it ‘gambling’ when I chased the next win. But real life doesn’t pay out in bonuses—it pays out in meaning.

I grew up in Brooklyn where jazz played like memory: improvisational, unpredictable, alive. My father painted murals on the walls while my mother typed debug logs like prayers.

We didn’t have luck—we had presence.

The system didn’t care if I won or lost. It only cared if I showed up—still, still coding, still breathing, still being human.

I once tried to ‘buy’ the jackpot—a high-risk algorithm with 95% win rate. The UI said: ‘You’re not ready.’ So I paused. Then wrote this:

// const loneliness = require(‘humanity’); // const code = createPoetry({ // rhythm: ‘jazz’, // color: ‘#0F172A’, // mood: ‘calm’, // length: 12, // });

It rendered slower than any slot machine. The lights flickered—but they lit anyway. The crowd never cheered me—until one whispered:“You’re not broken. You’re becoming… yourself”

That’s when I stopped chasing wins—and started writing them.