I used to think persistence was willpower, gritting your teeth and pushing through. Years later I found that the things I actually stuck with never required persistence at all.
After years of ops you develop a strange illusion that systems do not break. Then one night at 3 a.m. the phone wakes you up, and every "should" stops applying.
I rebuilt my personal site from scratch today, and only reached a version I could tolerate on the seventh attempt. Afterwards I realised writing code is no different from when I was thirty — think first, redo the work, and still stare at the screen at midnight knowing something is off.
