Buggy Code and the $9.99 Problem
How getting fed up with my own nonsense led to a system upgrade (and fewer cat-shaped tea strainers)
At some point, real change doesn’t come from inspiration. It doesn’t descend from the heavens like a divine quest prompt or show up in a motivational meme shared by a well-meaning aunt. It starts with the moment you finally get fed up with your own bullshit.
When the loop of “Why am I like this?” reruns one too many times, and the inner dialogue gets interrupted by a full-system error message:
You have exceeded your limit. Please debug immediately.
Enter: The Reckoning
For me, that moment came during what I now refer to as The Great Plastic Drawer Reckoning of 2022.
There I was, knee-deep in expired batteries, mystery cables, novelty socks, and enough Target clearance impulse buys to stock a medium-sized apothecary. I'd just tripped over a box labeled “Halloween Decor (??)” and knocked over a precarious tower of unused notebooks and cat-shaped tea strainers.
I didn’t need a Marie Kondo intervention. I needed to patch my internal code.
Emotional Code, Buggy Behavior
My spending habits weren’t just random. They were like a buggy in-game script: triggered by stress, distraction, or the illusion that a new gadget would magically fix a bad mood.
“Oh, a bamboo drawer organizer will totally make me feel in control of my life,” I’d think, while clicking Add to Cart like I was casting a healing spell. Only—spoiler alert—bamboo doesn't cure burnout.
Eventually, my finances were wheezing, my space was overflowing, and my shame-to-satisfaction ratio was looking real grim. And in a rare flash of clarity (or maybe just caffeine), I finally declared:
This code is garbage.
Patch Notes: Version “I’m Done With This”
So I rewrote the rule. Two new lines:
If it costs more than $10, I don’t buy it for 24 hours. Period.
If I bring something in, something else must go out.
That was it. Simple. Binary. Like flipping a switch from Impulse Goblin to Conscious Consumer. No drama. No guilt-tripping. Just… make it so.
(Yes, I channeled my inner Jean-Luc. We are absolutely talking about the kind of clarity that makes Number One execute an order before you’ve finished the sentence.)
Fast Travel to Progress
What shocked me wasn’t just that it worked—but that it worked fast. Once I started treating the behavior like bad code instead of a moral failing, everything shifted.
Suddenly I was playing the game with strategy, not shame. I wasn’t “failing at adulthood”—I was patching my emotional subroutines.
This Is What Coaching Feels Like
Life coaching, for me, is the same kind of process. It’s not about being told what to do—it’s about spotting the glitchy parts of your internal programming and choosing something better.
Sometimes the buggy code is comforting. Sometimes we cling to it because we wrote it during a survival patch years ago. But when it starts crashing the system? It’s time to log out, recompile, and come back stronger.
And now, every time I pause at checkout, every time I hesitate before dragging some shiny thing into my inventory, I think:
This is what a patched system feels like.
Not perfect. Not cured. Just... a little more stable.
With fewer cat-shaped tea strainers.
And that, my friends, is progress.