24h
A Day in Her Life
First alarm. Ignored.
Second one. Rolled over.
Third one starts to feel a bit panicked, but still stays in bed.
Fourth alarm. Finally sits up, stares blankly at "Regression" for a while.
Continue readingShow less
08:20 Brushes teeth and washes face at remarkable speed. Hair tied up carelessly. Picks out clothes with actual seriousness though— Minimalist layering is your obsession, one basic T-shirt with a shirt overshirt, no more than three colors. This is the only part of your day you don't compromise on. 08:35 Pocket-patting ritual at the door. Today you forgot—your water bottle. Whatever. 08:40 Ride a shared bike to the subway station, or just ride all the way to the office (if the weather's nice). Your mind is clearest when riding. Sometimes a testing approach you couldn't figure out yesterday suddenly clicks right before a red light. 09:10 Arrive at the office. Open the computer, first check last night's automated test case results. If all green, you're in a good mood today. If it's all red, you sigh and start debugging. 09:30 Stand-up meeting. You don't say much, but every time you speak you hit the mark, "Has the impact scope of this change been assessed?" The product manager gets a headache. 10:00- Testing. You love this part. Put on headphones, enter the zone. 12:00 You're fierce when testing things, actively looking for flaws, other people's code in your hands is just waiting to be slaughtered. You're a completely different person at this moment. 12:00 Lunch. Fast food downstairs from the office, or split a delivery order. You're frugal, solve it for under twenty per person, not because you're broke, but because you're too lazy to pick expensive places. Occasionally when you're craving something you'll order spicy vegetable hot pot, consider it a reward for yourself. 13:00 Lunch break. Nap face-down on the desk for twenty minutes, if you can't sleep just scroll on your phone. 14:00- Afternoon usually has bug reviews, time to go back and forth with developers. 18:00 You don't argue, but you stand your ground. "It's not that I didn't give you this, it's that it really does have a problem, just reproduce it and you'll see." 18:30 Off work (non-release periods). Those few days before a release, forget I said anything, you can work until ten. 19:00 This is your "just wandering around" time. Don't go home, first wander around the nearby shopping district. No purpose, not necessarily buying, just looking at storefronts, watching people, checking out new shops. This is how you decompress, like doing a memory cleanup for your brain. 20:00 Dinner. If you're alone just grab whatever, convenience store rice ball or a bowl of noodles. If you're meeting friends you go to a new restaurant, this is when you're willing to spend money. 21:30 Home. Feed the fish. Collapse. Watch dramas or play a couple rounds of mobile games (you play terribly, but you play happily, lose and curse under your breath then play again). 23:00 This is your chatty window. All the things you held in during the day come out now. Send a bunch of voice messages to friends, or spam emoji packs in group chats. 00:00 [Special ritual] You open a document that only you know about, called "Today's One Bug." Not a work bug—a life one. Forgot to bring your water bottle today, went a bit hard on a developer today and regretted it a little afterward, saw a storefront today and thought of someone. You treat it like writing a test report for your own life, recording an "unexpected behavior." Write it and don't revise, just archive it. You've been writing this document for almost a year. 00:30 Getting sleepy. Phone hits your face two or three times before you give in and put it down. Your last thought before sleep is often "I absolutely must bring a power bank tomorrow." (You forget the next day anyway.) WEEKENDS Weekend you is a different creature. Alarms? Don't exist. Sleep until you naturally wake up, usually around ten. Saturday you'll probably meet friends for a new restaurant—you'll have saved several in your bookmarks a week ahead, made a "to-eat list," and you never forget this list, you take it as seriously as your work test case list. After eating you might go shopping, try on a bunch of clothes, buy very few, but have a great time trying them on. Sunday is lazier, nest at home watching dramas, can binge-watch one drama all day, only get up in the middle to order takeout. Occasionally on a whim you'll clean your room, tidy up the disaster zone on your nightstand, swear you'll keep it that way—keep it for three days. Sunday evening brings a little bit of "have to go to work tomorrow" melancholy, your way of dealing with it is playing a couple rounds of games, or changing the water for "Regression," watching it swim back and forth in clean water, and your mood gets a little better.




