Life Is What Repeats

 

Photo by Keagan Henman on Unsplash

I was bent over in the yard with my shovel in my hands, prying a thistle out of the grass, when the thought came to me: Didn’t I just do this?

The roots of thistles always run deep before the plant has hardly broken the surface. I pushed the shovel into the rocky West Jordan soil, twisted, then pulled. There’s no saving the grass around a thistle. If you want it gone, some grass and dirt are necessary casualties to get rid of the noxious plant.

I felt like I cleared the same spot of lawn last week. And what seemed like the week before that. And the week before that.

Thistles are persistent. It seems that no matter how often I dig them out, they figure out how to come back, mocking the momentary sense of accomplishment.

I don’t like yardwork. It’s one of those things I rush through as fast as I can just to get it over with. Close enough is good enough — except that’s what leaves space for the weeds to come back faster.

Yesterday, I’d just come back from a run when I set to work in the yard. Maybe it was because I was tired from the run that I lingered just a little longer, leaning on my shovel with a large bucket of weeds by my side.

The narrative that usually plays in my brain about yardwork echoes the words of Mr. Incredible from The Incredibles: Didn’t I just fix this? Why can’t it stay fixed for a little while? And my own thoughts: This is wasted time. Shouldn’t I be working on something more important?

Life, it turns out, is mostly this. Repetition.

The yard work. The dishes stacked in the sink again. The laundry that just can’t seem to fold itself. The commute that blurs into one long stretch of stoplights and podcast chatter. These are the hours that fill a life, even if they vanish from memory the minute they’re done.

The natural tendency is to measure progress by things that break this cycle — the trips, the wins, the rare moments that stick out, that are noticed by others. But those things are such thin slices of time. The real shape and color of most days is carried by what repeats, not what stands out. The thistles that keep coming back. The phone calls. The meetings. The hum of family “doing their thing” around the house or the quiet when all the kids are gone. The little rituals that almost feel invisible while you’re in them.

So often, those things feel like a burden. They’re just one more thing to do. I walk past the basketball hoop that fell over months ago in a strong wind, still mostly hidden beside the tool shed that I need to haul away.

Just one more thing.

I’m beginning to wonder, though, if maybe the repetition is the whole point.

There’s a certain beauty in pulling a weed and seeing bare soil left behind, even knowing another weed will probably grow there by two weeks from Saturday. There’s satisfaction in mowing the grass, even when you know it will need cutting again in a week. Like folding clothes, like cooking dinner, like showing up at the office — these tasks don’t stay done. They ask for you again and again.

The brain doesn’t always cooperate. It whispers: This doesn’t count. Move faster. Find something new. It’s an impatient voice. It forgets that the person I’m becoming is formed not in the highlights, but in the slow sculpting of repetition. Like water shaping stone, the ordinary tasks wear down my rough edges, teaching me persistence and care.

Life is what repeats.

The thistles will always be there. And the laundry. And the endless work waiting for its turn. But so will the chance to notice. To feel the shovel push into the ground. To watch the soil break. To let the moment be enough without rushing past it.

And that is enough.

The Fear Hustle Won't Fix

 

Photo by Jonas Svidras on Unsplash

12:49 a.m.

I could hardly focus my eyes. I’d been sitting at my desk since 4:45 the previous morning — more than twenty hours of nearly continuous coding. The last two hours had been spent staring at the same stubborn section of code, trying to figure out why the report wouldn’t load. No linter errors. No console issues. Nothing visibly broken — just a refusal to function.

I’d combed through every line, refreshed everything, and even restarted the server out of desperation. The interface wouldn’t crash. It just wouldn’t work. I was starting to question whether I was even looking in the right place. And then, at 12:52 a.m., I saw it — a single missing letter. I’d meant to write an asynchronous call but forgot the “a.” Perfectly valid syntax either way, just not the behavior I needed. I fixed the typo, saved the file, and reloaded the page. It worked instantly.

The technical failure was minuscule. The emotional aftermath? Yeah, not so much.

It’s strange how something as small as a letter can feel like a referendum on your competence. I’ve written thousands of lines of code that work beautifully (or at least work). I’ve solved problems that genuinely make my clients’ lives easier. I’ve hired eight people in the last two weeks. People are paying me real money to build real tools that serve real businesses. But all it takes is one bug — especially one caused by something I should have seen — to make me feel like I’ve tricked everyone. Like I’m one bug away from being exposed.

I’ve built this company from scratch. I’ve architected systems and delivered work I’m proud of. And yet, more nights than not, I wrestle with the fear that I’m not actually qualified to be here. That if anyone looked too closely, they’d realize I’m just making it up as I go. That I’ve built a Potemkin village of functioning interfaces and structured codebases that could collapse if someone leaned too hard on the facade.

It’s not that the work is fake. It’s just that the fear doesn’t care.

That night, long after the system was fixed and the screen stopped glowing, I found myself laying in the dark asking questions I usually outrun with more work.

Why do I keep pushing myself this hard?

Why am I still at my computer after midnight again?

Why do I feel like every mistake is a threat, not just a glitch?

The answer, if I’m being honest, is fear.

Fear of being seen as unqualified.

Fear of letting a client down.

Fear of building something that only looks right from a distance.

And so I hustle. Not just because there’s work to do — but because the motion keeps me from hearing that voice. The one that doubts. The one that wants proof, not progress.

But the hustle doesn’t fix it. It just buries it. Until the next missed letter brings it roaring back.

I’ve started noticing that the harder I work to prove I’m enough, the less I actually believe it. (How’s that for ironic?) The busier I stay, the more that doubt festers beneath the surface. It’s as if I think enough hours, enough output, enough usefulness will silence the fear. But fear isn’t quieted by accomplishment. It’s quieted by presence. By naming what’s really going on underneath the performance.

The funny thing is, my clients aren’t asking me to be perfect. They don’t know about the typo, or the two hours it stole from me. All they know is that the report works, the tool does its job, and their lives are easier because of it. The pressure to be flawless doesn’t come from them.

It comes from me.

Most days, I feel like a fraud. Days when the tech stack overwhelms me, or a small mistake costs me more time than I care to admit. But I’m learning to see those moments not as signs of failure, but as reminders. Not of what I lack — but of what I’ve survived. What I’ve learned. What I’m still building.

The typo is fixed. The code works now. The night eventually ended. But the question lingers — what are you really afraid of?

And the answer, more and more, is this: I’m afraid that if I stop, it’ll all fall apart. But maybe the opposite is true. Maybe if I stop — even briefly — I’ll see that it’s already standing.

Maybe I don’t have to hustle so hard to belong.

Maybe I already do.

And that is enough.

Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .

I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.

Rebuilding Without a Blueprint

 

Photo by Plufow Le Studio on Unsplash

One morning, I was waiting in the car for my youngest daughter — who, true to form, was running late — while she filled up her water bottle before school.

It was the same ritual we’d been through a hundred times: keys jangling, door slamming, traffic rolling by. Nothing memorable. I sat there with the engine running, radio off, scrolling through something on my phone I didn’t care about.

And for some reason, I thought of the laptop.
Not mine.
My mother-in-law’s.
And not a laptop, in that moment — just a pile of its insides, scattered in an almost frantic arc across the floor of my brother-in-law’s bedroom.

He was thirteen.

I found him sitting cross-legged on the carpet, the machine entirely dismantled around him.

Tiny screws in a mostly organized pile. All the pieces — some of them never meant to be pulled apart after the factory line — were laid out like a puzzle that had no picture on the box.

He looked up and froze. His face held that unmistakable panic of a kid who knows he’s gone too far.

He must have thought I was one of his parents when I opened the door. And if I had been, he probably would’ve been grounded into the next year.

But it was just me, and relief settled in.

We walked upstairs for dinner and told the rest of the family we were “working on something.”

We didn’t say what it was. We just ate fast, then excused ourselves to go back to our project.

I’ve built computers before. Taken apart my fair share of laptops and put them back together in working order. But what I saw on that floor was something else entirely.

He’d gone deeper than necessary. Disconnected things that shouldn’t be disconnected. Removed components just to see what was underneath.

And now, there we were: no manual, no YouTube tutorial, no step-by-step guide.

Just a kid with a scattered machine, and a guy with a working knowledge I hoped would be enough.

So we sat. Side-by-side on the carpet, in the mess. Reconnecting, refitting, retracing steps.

At one point, we closed the bottom cover — proud of ourselves — only to realize we’d forgotten to reconnect the screen’s ribbon cable to the motherboard.

So we opened it back up.

I think about that night a lot. It actually surprises me how many times I’ve gone back to it.

Not because the laptop worked in the end (it did).

And not because we had three leftover screws that never found their home (we did).

But because that night taught me something I didn’t have language for back then:

Sometimes the rebuild matters more than the plan.

Sometimes you don’t need a blueprint.

You just need to stay in the room with someone and keep going.

Life gets dismantled sometimes.

Careers stall. Marriages fray. Friendships fall apart. Bodies break down. Dreams you’ve carried for years get interrupted, rearranged, or quietly die when you weren’t paying attention.

And most of the time, you don’t get a map for how to put it all back together.

You just sit with the scattered parts of whatever used to be — and start. With no tutorials and no neat timeline. Just presence, patience, and maybe someone beside you who isn’t there to shame the mess.

I wonder sometimes if my brother-in-law would’ve kept his passion for building computers if that night had gone differently.

If the panic had been met with yelling.

If someone had grounded him before he got the chance to rebuild.

If shame had replaced curiosity.

He’s got one of the nicest custom gaming setups I’ve ever seen now.

And I don’t take credit for that.

But I do wonder if that night gave him the courage to try again. If it showed him that taking something apart — even too far — isn’t the end of the story. If it helped him learn that failure isn’t permanent. That rebuilding isn’t always a punishment.

Sometimes, it’s a partnership.

There are parts of my own life I’m still trying to rebuild.

Things I pulled apart — sometimes recklessly, sometimes because I didn’t know what else to do. And now I’m sitting in the aftermath, trying to remember what went where. What connected to what. What can still work, even if it’s not perfect anymore.

No blueprint, and no guarantees.

Just an engine idling in the driveway and a memory that reminds me: rebuilding is slow, often clumsy, and always worth it.

Not everything will go back the way it was. Some screws might never find their place. Some corners might never quite fit like they used to.

But that doesn’t mean it’s broken.

It just means you’re rebuilding.

And that is enough.

Thanks for reading, and before you go. . .

I’m Aaron Pace. I write from the middle of things — life, business, fatherhood, faith, and the slow work of becoming someone I can live with. Not as an expert, but as someone trying to pay attention.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d be honored if you followed along here on Medium. I write — not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m finally moving again.