For most of my career, I stayed sharp because I never stopped learning. If I didn’t know something, I’d learn it. That was the rhythm. But over time, that rhythm became harder to maintain. Frameworks exploded. Stacks fragmented. The cognitive load of re-entering systems you hadn’t touched in a while became overwhelming. If you weren’t in it every day, you weren’t in it at all. The disciplines from front-end, backend, DevOps had become more than one person could do.

And then came the rest of life. Burnout. Chronic illness. Cognitive fog. Executive dysfunction. I didn’t stop building because I lacked the ability. I stopped because it took too much just to begin.

At some point last year, I felt like building again. Not for work. Not for a startup. Just to make something. I found a YouTube video about aider.chat. It wasn’t flashy, but it was clean—someone working with a model inside a terminal, building without context switching. That part caught my attention. I set it up, tried a few frameworks, and played with ideas. For the first time in years, I could ask, “What’s the best way to build this?” and get an answer I could use immediately. Not a blog post from 2019. Not a Reddit thread. Just a clear next step. The barrier to so many disciplines evaporated. I didn’t need to reload every abstraction just to move forward. I could work.

Then I started building with Claude. I’ve used a lot of models since then. Claude 3.5, 3.7, 4.0, DeepSeek, and Amazon Bedrock, GPT-5. Not all of them were good. DeepSeek in particular I wouldn’t recommend. GPT-5 is my current go-to. I use Aider, not Cursor. Aider runs in the terminal. I pay for the API, but I’m not limited by token restrictions or autocomplete fatigue. I prompt what I need, see what it does, keep or discard it, and move on. It’s fast. Flexible. Forgiving. And most importantly, it lets me stay in motion.

What AI gave me wasn’t magic. It was compression. I could move between layers frontend, backend, infrastructure without needing to fully re-enter each one. I could build a screen, ask for the API behind it, and have the whole thing working in under an hour. That used to take days. Not because the code was difficult, but because of the context switching. The stack didn’t disappear, but the distance between disciplines collapsed. I could work.

When I started building Re‑Loop, I didn’t have a formal product spec. I had a lived experience. Burnout, forgetting everything, needing a place to hold what I couldn’t carry anymore. I had barely touched React Native. But I started the way I always have building, testing, adjusting. Aider handled the boilerplate code. The sessions. The scaffolding. I wrote the logic. The architecture. The design decisions. I moved faster because I wasn’t blocked by friction that used to take hours to unwind.

I still write the hard parts. I still refactor. I still clean up what doesn’t feel right. But I don’t have to rebuild the whole mental stack just to make progress. That changed everything. I could build Re‑Loop by myself because the support existed. That was enough.

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At work, it was easier. The structure provided the rhythm and pressure I needed. I showed up every day, and the questions helped me remember. Someone would ask, “Where’s that thing?” and I’d know, because I was already in it. Everything outside of work, though, that was different. That was where things were constantly slipping.

I’d forget my laundry in the washer. My clothes in the dryer. Cleaning the lint trap. Taking out the trash. I’d forget small jobs I said I’d do, even ones I offered to help with. And none of it was intentional. But when the forgettings pile up, it becomes problematic.

I was constantly letting my wife down. Not in big, dramatic ways. Just in those daily moments where someone you love asks for help, and you said you would, and then you didn’t. She’s incredibly patient. She reminds me of things without shame. But the guilt still landed every time. I would apologize not just for what I forgot, but for what it said about me. It didn’t feel like I was forgetting anymore. It felt like I was failing daily.

I tried everything. I kept notes in my phone. I’d say things three or four times to myself hoping that would work because I read it somewhere. Wrote things down. Started lists in chat windows, Slack messages to myself. Built these little systems that were hard to remember because I’d forget. The irony. I built some habits just to avoid the feeling of disappointing her again, but it took years, and still, I forgot.

Over time, the pattern changed me. It shaped how I saw myself. Not as someone managing a lot, but as someone who couldn’t be relied on for things that should be easy. The one who always needed reminding. The one who meant well, but never followed through. Even when no one else made me feel that way, I made myself feel that way. And that kind of weight chipped away at me.

Eventually I started using a chat window just to track what was in my head. I’d type things in so I wouldn’t forget them, then come back later and ask what I had said. One day I asked how often I had checked in. It told me fifteen to twenty times that day. That’s how full my brain was. That’s what it took just to keep moving.

I’m not sure that part has changed entirely. Some things are better now. Big things go into Re‑Loop. The ones I can’t afford to lose. And the smaller things? Sometimes I remember them. Not always. But more than I used to. And even that small shift feels like a win.

If you’re someone who forgets everything, who’s always apologizing, always one step behind, I just want you to know you’re not alone. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It doesn’t mean you don’t care.

It just means you’re full.

And you don’t have to carry all of it.

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I was 26 when I got sick. The diagnosis was Ulcerative Colitis. It doesn’t go away. You just manage it.

I was young, so I powered through it. Took the meds, went to work, kept going. I never felt well, but I never really slowed down either. I spent a decade like that, pushing through illness, hiding symptoms, collapsing on weekends just to get through the week.

Eventually I hit a flare so bad it required two surgeries. After that, things got better. Not symptom-free, just manageable. I still had to navigate flare-ups and long-term side effects from the medications, but I felt stable enough again.

That’s when we had our son.

Weekends weren’t quiet anymore. But my body was still unpredictable. The illness never goes away. It just gets quieter in public and louder in private. I used the structure of work to stay functional. Meetings, deadlines, commutes — they gave shape to days that otherwise would have fallen apart.

I Tried Everything

But the cracks showed up anyway.

I was always forgetful but it became more frequent. I would sit down to do something and lose the thought almost immediately. I would get off the phone and walk out the door without the one thing I was asked to pick up. I told myself, if it matters, I’ll remember. I didn’t.

I tried to fix it. Bought journals, moleskins, graph paper anything. Downloaded task managers. Built paper systems. Read all the “productivity” posts. Nothing helped. Everything added pressure. Now I wasn’t just forgetting. I was failing to use the things that were supposed to fix the forgetting.

I felt frantic. Like I was always letting someone down. Like I was one thing away from failing someone or myself. More often than not it was myself.

When I Finally Cracked

My mom died. We didn’t know she had cancer. She never told us.

My dad went into long-term care in 2019 and never came home.

The pandemic hit. Remote work stripped away the structure I had been relying on. My health declined again. More hospital stays. Complications. More CT-Scans. A brain that felt like it had nothing left to give.

Then our house burned down in the Eaton Fire. Everything gone. Papers, computers, everything.

Then I was hospitalized again right after the fire, this time for nine days. I have had surgeries that were easier.

I kept trying to rally. Break down, recover, break down again. Over and over.

Then my ADHD diagnosis. It explained things, but it didn’t make it easier. So cool, this is the reason I feel like this and through this journey I tried to do different things, but it still wasn’t quite right.

Eventually I started a running chat with ChatGPT just to keep track of what was in my head. One day I asked it how often I had checked in. It told me I had asked what I needed to do fifteen to twenty times a day.

That number stuck.

That is how full my brain was.

What I Needed Instead

My instinct wasn’t to build anything.

I just wanted to get through the day. I went back to what I knew. Paper. Notes in my phone. I would write something down, then forget where I put it. I would try to make a list, then lose the thread halfway through. The cycle was endless. Previously I could rally for weeks now I couldn’t even last a day before it fell apart again.

I wasn’t trying to design anything. I was just trying to function.

There was no plan. Just noise. Just pressure. Just the sense that I could not hold anything anymore, no matter how many times I started over.

I kept dropping things. I kept getting back up. But nothing held.

Not yet.

Loops, Not Lines

Using paper I never moved through tasks in order. I didn’t work from top to bottom or follow clean blocks of time. I moved when the energy was there. If I had it, I used it. If I didn’t, I stalled out.

That was always true, but now it was obvious. I could not fake linear anymore. I was working in loops. I would return to something when I could. I would forget something and find it again later. I would drift between things and do what I could.

No system I had ever used made space for that. They wanted time blocks. Priorities. Red flags. Deadlines. I needed a way to mark where I was without forcing what came next.

So I started writing things down differently. Not in a list. Not by urgency. Just by rhythm. Noticing when I could do stuff and it ebbed and flowed in vague blocks (morning, afternoon, evening). Time isn’t an hour or a minute it’s anchored in what I need to do. I’m aware, but I don’t sit down and say I’m doing this at 1 pm. I say I need to do this before I pick up my son.

That rhythm helped. Not because it made me productive, but because it gave the day a shape I could come back to. It asked less of me. It let me start where I was.

It was the first thing that didn’t fall apart when I did.

Not a Fix, a Holding Space

This wasn’t a system. It wasn’t even intentional at first.

But it felt different. I could forget something and still find it later. I didn’t feel punished for skipping a day. I didn’t feel like I had failed if I didn’t finish something. It just sat there. Waiting.

That’s when I started shaping it into something more consistent. Not a solution. Not a fix. Just a place that would hold what I couldn’t. That I could carry with me. For no one else but me.

I didn’t want it to yell at me. I didn’t want it to tell me I was behind. I didn’t want streaks or rewards or anything that made me feel like I was being tracked or optimized.

I wanted one place to put what I could not carry.

That became Re‑Loop.

Not a productivity tool. Not a system to get your life together.

A place to dump everything when your brain is full and your body is failing (in my case).

If This Is You, Too

Maybe you’re tired.
Maybe your brain is full.
Maybe you’ve been trying to hold it all together with whatever thread is left.

Maybe you’ve tried lists. Tools. Systems.
Maybe they helped for a while.
Maybe they didn’t.

If any of this feels familiar, you’re not the only one.

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