I'm writing a book about getting through the hard parts of life when everything feels impossible. Not a typical self-help book full of "just try harder" advice. Something gentler. More real.

After losing my psychiatric service dog Harley in 2024, I tried every app and self-help system out there. Most of them made me feel worse. Streaks that reset. Obligations that piled up. Pressure to be productive when I could barely get out of bed.

This book is what I needed instead.

I'm being intentionally vague here, but the core ideas:

• •Small steps that actually work: When you can't do much, do what you can
• •Seasons of life: Growing, fading, dormant, storm. All necessary, all beautiful
• •No streaks, no guilt, no shame: Just permission to be exactly where you are
• •Built on personal stories: Harley, my daughters, health anxiety, surviving childhood trauma

It's part memoir, part framework, part permission slip.

I've spent 35+ years writing code. I know how to build systems. But this year taught me that life doesn't work like software. You can't just patch the bugs and deploy a fix.

Sometimes you need:

• •Permission to start impossibly small
• •A framework that works when you can barely function
• •Proof that survival counts as progress

I'm writing this for people in the deep end. The ones who picked up Atomic Habits and felt like failures. The ones scrolling instead of living. The ones who need to hear that showing up counts, even when you can't do much else.

• •Markdown for everything because why would I use anything else
• •Git for version control because I'm a developer and old habits die hard
• •Reference documents to keep track of stories, voice, and structure

Some days I write 2,000 words. Some days I reread the same paragraph 12 times and change one word.

Turns out writing about your dead dog and childhood trauma is harder than debugging race conditions.

Current status:

• •Introduction finalized ("Why This Book Exists")
• •Chapter outlines complete
• •Drafting Part I chapters
• •Target: 60,000-75,000 words total

I'm not rushing this. The whole point of the book is that there's no rush.

• 1.Writing is harder than coding: At least code gives you compiler errors. Writing just gives you doubt.
• 2.Vulnerability is terrifying: Admitting you couldn't take care of your dying dog because depression paralyzed you? That goes in the "extremely not comfortable" category.
• 3.Systems thinking applies everywhere: Even emotional frameworks need good architecture.

I've built a career solving technical problems. But the hardest problems aren't technical. They're human.

If this book helps one person feel less alone in the struggle, it's worth it. If it gives someone permission to count survival as success, even better.

And honestly? Writing this is helping me process Harley's death in a way nothing else has.

She put me on a path of saying yes to things. This book is how I honor that.

I'll share more as the project progresses. For now, I'm just taking it one small yes at a time.