My mug said to me I should stop checking LinkedIn and start writing again. I told it to mind its own handle.
The nerve!
So… My coffee mug and I have been in a committed relationship for ten months now.
We’ve been through all my ups and downs together — the late-night “Maybe I should just become a stripper… look at CardiB already!” spirals, the unfinished Leetcode medium dynamic programming problems, and my designer collection of rejection emails, stored neatly in a PriorityQueue — minHeap, of course. Duh!
And it’s also my most annoying best friend.
Mug: "You could practice Dijkstra’s algorithm."
Me: "Why? I’m not even sure I can find the shortest path to employment."
She huffs a little.
I half-heartedly open Leetcode, then close it. She eyes me critically.
Mug: "Is that the same shirt from yesterday?"
Me: "It's called consistency, sweetheart. Employers love that." I wink at her.
Me: "Remember when I used to do this stuff for fun? Like, actual fun? I’d stay up till 3 a.m. debugging some stupid recursive function just because I enjoyed it. Now I’m supposed to invert a binary tree while maintaining eye contact and ‘showing my thought process.’ Ugh."
Mug: "Suck it up, buttercup. Skeletons have more backbone — and they'd probably nail the system design round."
She laughed at her own joke.
Me: "I hate you."
Mug: "No you don't. I'm literally the only relationship that's working out for you right now."
I used to deploy to AWS. Now, I just stare at the clouds for 30 minutes and hope the universe autosaves my future.
Mug: "You know what your problem is?"
Me: "Oh good, a list. I love lists."
Mug: "Maybe you should follow up?"
Me: "With who? The recruiter who disappeared after asking for my availability, or the one who called me ‘Anjay’?"
Mug: "Both. The living and the dead deserve closure."
I stare into what’s left of my coffee. It stares back — judgmentally, of course.
Me: "You think I’m wasting time, don’t you?"
Mug: "You? The great Anju?".She scoffed at me.
"You’re just running an extended background process called existential dread."
Me: "Ha-ha."
Mug: "Relax. Maybe this isn’t a gap. Maybe it’s a refactor."
Me: "You sound like one of those LinkedIn influencers who post 'Stop scrolling. Start building.' and then sell online courses."
Mug: "Maybe you do need some discipline."
I roll my eyes, but something about it sticks.
A refactor? Huh…
All those old patterns I wrote under pressure (the ones those K-pop demon hunters warned me about) — all the unnecessary dependencies I kept around just to make things compile.
Maybe they’re being rewritten quietly, in the background.
Me: "Okay, okay. I get it. You're very wise for a vessel."
Mug: "I contain your caffeine. I am your life force. Show some respect."
I sigh, open my laptop, and hover over a blank document.
Me: "What now?" I ask.
Mug: "Write."
"Not a résumé. Something real."
So I do.
Mug: "Finally. Was that so hard?"
Me: "Shut up. You're just a cup."