Are You Living or Just Coping?

I was sitting at the kitchen table in my in-laws home when my wife’s 8-year-old nephew climbed up into the chair next to me with his favorite toddler blanket clutched in his arms. He’s got bright blue eyes and is always full of questions.

Over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at taking my office with me wherever I go. My laptop was humming with the portable screen partially blocked by the half-full bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper I’d been nursing since I got ready for the day.

He watched as the computer printed lines of log entries on the screen for maybe ten seconds before the inevitable barrage of questions began.

“What are you doing?”

Onscreen was a terminal window full of log entries and a soup of code that still wasn’t working quite right.

“I’m working,” I said.

He nodded.

“What are you working on?” He knelt up on his chair to get a better look at the log-filled screen.

I explained that I was building control software for a dual-axis tracking solar company.

Then he asked another question.

And another.

He asked about the code. About the logs. About what I was actually doing. How I knew how to do it. Who paid me. What the company was for. Why it was named that.

I answered each question, hoping the answers were simple yet detail-filled enough to satisfy his young mind. I liked explaining it. I liked that he was curious. I liked getting to tell the story.

At some point, though, it hit me: I talk about myself a lot.

It’s not (generally) in a boastful way, and not out of some deep narcissism (maybe it’s shallow narcissism). I just genuinely like telling the story of what I’m building. I love what we’re doing with Insytes and NovumDMS. I’ve put years into planning them and the last year building. I’ve put me into it. When someone asks about my work, I don’t give a polite summary. I roll out blueprints.

But that morning, something nudged me. Maybe it was the blanket. Maybe it was the way he kept his head tilted while I talked. I realized I didn’t know anything about what he loved.

So I asked.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

He lit up. “Be a LEGO design engineer. Or maybe play in the MLS.”

We’d been sitting at the table for 20 minutes, “Grannie” milling around the kitchen making breakfast for everything, and I finally showed up for my sister-in-law’s son.

This happens to me more often than I care to admit. Not the conversation with an 8-year-old but the rhythm of living that looks like forward motion but is really just coping at speed.

I’ve worked like this for years. My wife and I joke (sometimes somberly) that for the last two decades, I’ve been telling her: “Things will slow down after this next project.”

Spoiler: they haven’t.

Now that I run my own company, it’s different, and not always better. The difference is, I love the work again. The fire is back. The trade-off? I’ll sometimes work 18-hour days without blinking. I’ll get up at 5:00 AM to have a team meeting (they’re 3 hours ahead of me) and realize at noon that I haven’t moved from my desk in 7 hours.

I’m not burning out because of misery. I’m burning out in spite of joy.

And that’s almost worse. Because it feels justified. It feels noble. It feels like proof that I’m doing something meaningful.

But lately I’ve started wondering: meaningful to who?

There’s a version of me that used to go to work, put in my time, come home, and only have complaints to show for the day. I knew what I was building for someone else but it has lost any value for me. I was just keeping up. I was coping.

Now, I’ve built something real. It matters. It helps people. But even in this newer, better version of the story — am I living it? Or just managing it well?

That little moment at the kitchen table broke something open.

The same night as the conversation with my wife’s nephew, I was talking to my brother-in-law. He was getting the same elevator pitch I’d given in the morning but with even more flare. There was a moment when I realized—stopped me dead in my tracks, actually—that I’ve literally spent decades narrating my life more than living it. My default position has been to pitch it, even when no one’s asking.

I rarely post on social media, but I kind of view my life in a post-worthy way. The thing is, real presence doesn’t need a caption. It doesn’t even want one. It’s not a performance. It’s not even a plan.

It’s sitting next to a kid with a blanket on his lap and asking what he loves.

It’s a reminder that my value isn’t in how clearly I can articulate what I do. It’s in my ability to listen to others, to myself, and to the life that’s happening all around me, even in the quiet.

I still love my work. I’m not about to abandon it. But I’m trying to catch myself when I start narrating instead of noticing. When I start proving instead of participating.

And maybe, most importantly, when I start coping instead of living.

I’m learning to pause the performance.

To ask better questions.

To listen, even to my own answers.

To see the difference between motion and meaning.

And that is enough.