Chapter 1: The Weight of 3 AM

The cursor blinks. White against blue.

Google—Senior Software Engineer, Education Technology. The page has been open for forty-seven minutes.

David’s apartment is quiet in the way only 3 AM can be. No traffic. No footsteps from upstairs. His desk lamp creates a small circle of light. Everything beyond it remains in shadow: the unmade futon, the stack of unwashed dishes, the boxes he still hasn’t unpacked from six months ago.

The apartment smells like stale coffee and something else—the sour-sweet smell of stress sweat in unwashed clothes. When did he last do laundry? The radiator clanks. Too warm, then too cold. He can’t figure out how to adjust it.

His phone sits face-down beside the mousepad. Three missed calls from his mother. The screen has a crack he got two weeks ago. Dropped it rushing to a user test. Never fixed it. Costs $80. That’s almost three days of runway.

The job posting describes what he used to be: Strong background in full-stack development. Experience shipping products at scale. Passion for education technology.

He could write the cover letter in twenty minutes. He’s written it before—different companies, same paragraphs, same lies about passion.

His co-founder’s text is still on the screen, minimized but visible. The user feedback is tough but we can pivot. You’re brilliant at this. We’ll figure it out. Get some rest.

Genuinely meant. No sarcasm. Just support.

Somehow that makes it worse.

David closes his eyes. His neck aches. When did he last stand up? His lower back has that hollow feeling from too many hours in the chair. He should eat something. He made coffee around 2 PM. That was dinner, apparently.

When he opens them, the cursor is still blinking.

Yesterday they showed the prototype to twelve high school students. Three months of work. Eighty-hour weeks. Every algorithm optimized.

“It feels like another homework app.”

“I don’t really get what makes it different.”

Different. It was supposed to be different. It was supposed to understand how each kid learns instead of forcing them into standardized paths. It was supposed to—

He switches back to the job posting.

Competitive salary. Comprehensive benefits. Opportunity to work with world-class team.

Six years he worked with a world-class team. Nice people. Smart. They went to lunch together, complained about product managers, shipped features that didn’t matter. Then went home and did it again.

His checking account balance is $3,847. Rent is $1,600. Due in eleven days.

On the corner of his desk: a worn paperback. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. The spine cracked in seven places, pages dog-eared, one passage underlined three times in blue ink.

He read it five years ago. It felt true then.

Now he’s the beginner. It doesn’t feel light.

The lamp flickers. Needs a new bulb.

David scrolls down to the “Apply Now” button. Green. Friendly. Inviting.

His finger hovers over the trackpad.

Outside, a car passes. Headlights sweep across the ceiling, briefly illuminating cracks in the plaster. The ceiling returns to darkness.

He moves the cursor away. Not closing the tab. Just hovering in the empty space beside it.

Neutral territory.

The memory arrives without warning.

It’s the way they do at 3 AM—not summoned, just suddenly there.

October 5, 2011. Sixteen years old.

The high school library smells like old carpet and anxiety. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. Everyone around him has their heads down, highlighters moving across textbooks in yellow and pink streaks. Three weeks until midterms. Class rank updates next month.

David is supposed to be studying for the physics exam. Instead, he’s on a borrowed laptop, reading the news.

Steve Jobs is dead.

He doesn’t know why he clicks the article. He’s heard of Jobs—everyone has. The iPhone guy. But it’s not like David owns Apple stock or camps outside stores for product launches.

Still, he clicks.

The article mentions the 2005 Stanford commencement speech. There’s a link. David has twelve minutes before the library closes. He plugs in his headphones and presses play.

Jobs’s voice is quieter than he expected. Not the salesman voice from keynotes. Something else. More tired. More real.

"…for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

David glances around the library. Everyone is still studying. Competing.

The boy next to him—Marcus, ranked third in their class—has his textbook angled so David can’t see his notes. Not that David was trying. But the assumption is there.

Earlier today, their physics teacher handed back exams. David got 98. Top score. Mr. Chen announced it to the class. “This is what excellence looks like,” he said, holding up David’s test.

Marcus got 94. David saw his face when the teacher said it. Something died in his eyes for just a moment.

David wanted to say something. That it didn’t matter. That four points meant nothing. But he knew it did matter. Because next month, when rankings update, those four points would be part of the calculation. And Marcus’s parents would ask why he wasn’t first. And Marcus would study harder, sleep less, pull further ahead of whoever was ranked fourth.

That’s how it works. Someone wins. Everyone else loses.

David looks down at his physics textbook now. He’s good at this. Top of the class. His parents are proud. The path is clear: ace the exams, get into the best university, major in computer science or engineering, land a job at a big tech company.

Stability. Safety. Success.

Jobs keeps talking.

*“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life… Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

David rewinds ten seconds. Listens again.

Your own inner voice.

Does he have one? Or has he just been following the script—hitting his marks, clearing the hurdles, winning the race without asking where it leads?

The librarian announces five minutes until closing. Around him, students pack their bags with the efficient desperation of people who have three more hours of homework waiting at home.

David closes the laptop. Returns it to the desk. Walks out into the October evening.

The air is cool. The sky is that particular shade of orange-grey that happens right before full darkness. He stands on the steps for a moment, backpack heavy on his shoulders.

Something shifted in the library. Not dramatic. Not a lightning bolt.

Just a small, quiet yearning.

He thinks about Marcus’s face. The numb look when he got 94 instead of 98. Four points. David’s victory was Marcus’s defeat. That’s how the system works.

But Jobs’s voice—that tired, real voice—suggested something else. Not clearly. Not in words David can articulate. Just a feeling that the race everyone’s running might be heading somewhere he doesn’t want to go.

Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

He doesn’t know what it means. Can’t explain it. But the feeling is there, lodged somewhere between his ribs.

David starts walking home.

The world around him looks the same as it did an hour ago. But he’s carrying something now. A question that will follow him for the next decade:

If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?

Sixteen years old.

The answer is already no.

The memory fades.

David is back at his desk. 4:17 AM. The job posting still open.

His hands are cold. The apartment is cold. He should turn on the heat, but that costs money.

He looks at the biography on his desk. Five years since he first read it. Ten years since he first heard that speech.

A decade of saying “next year.”

Next year, when he has more experience. Next year, when he knows more about business. Next year, when he has more money… Next year, when the risk feels smaller.

But risk doesn’t get smaller. It just gets heavier. Every promotion, every raise, every year of stability—another link in the chain.

Eight months ago, he was laid off. Lost the salary, the health insurance, the 401k match—not by choice, but by “market conditions” and “fiscal responsibility.”

He could never forget his mother’s voice on the phone that day: “How will you afford a house? How will you build a family? Your father and I didn’t sacrifice everything so you could lose everything.”

She wasn’t angry. She was terrified. For mom, he just lost his bright future.

Because she sees him suffering, living in that tiny apartment, all alone. She sees the difficulties—clear as anything. To her, he’s destroying his future for nothing. For her, he is gambling his future away. And maybe she’s right. Maybe this is unbearable.

Three missed calls on his phone. He knows what she’s thinking: He looks so tired. He used to have a good job, a future. Now what? How long can he keep this up? What if he’s forty and still trying? What are the chances of building a successful company from scratch? How could he compete with the giants?

She imagines him alone. No wife, no children, no grandchildren for her to hold. No stability to fall back on when his parents are gone. Just him and his ideas and the years slipping past. She sees the suffering.

David closes his eyes. What troubles him the most is that, deep down, he knows his mother is not wrong. According to latest statistics, ninety percent of startups end up with nothing. Years of hard work down the drain.

Just to make things worse, his mind keeps reminding him that his latest prototype is a complete failure. The users didn’t get it. His co-founder, Alex, is being kind and supportive, which somehow makes it worse. At least if Alex were angry, David could fight back. But there’s nothing to fight. Just the empty space where certainty used to be. Everything is even more unbearable all of a sudden.

He could click the button. Send the application. Interview in a few weeks. Offer letter in a month. Back to the life he knows.

His mother would go back to talk about family events again.

David stands up. His knees crack. He walks to the window.

The city sprawls below—lights scattered across the darkness like dropped coins. Somewhere out there, other people are awake. Sitting at desks, staring at screens, hovering between the life they have and the life they can’t quite reach.

He wonders if they’ll click.

Behind him, the laptop screen dims to save battery. The room gets darker.

When he turns back, his hands are steadier than they were an hour ago.

He sits down.

The job posting is still there. The green button. One click.

Three months of work—gone. The users didn’t get it. Eight months since the layoff, and what does he have to show for it? A failed prototype. A dwindling bank account. A mother who can’t sleep.

Friends from college have stopped asking how it’s going. He knows what they’re thinking. Eight months. If it were going to work, wouldn’t something have happened by now?

Maybe they’re right.

Maybe he’s just someone who couldn’t handle the corporate world and is pretending this is a choice instead of an escape. He sometimes wonders himself about his true intentions. Maybe he’s just not mature enough to face the daily grinding of a corporate employee. Maybe he should “Grow up!” as his dad told him, and get a real job.

Maybe the smart thing—the rational thing—is to admit it didn’t work and move on.

He could be back in an office in six weeks. Salary. Structure. Routine coffee breaks. Coworkers’ chitchat. A title to tell people at parties. Just be normal again. Just one click away from everything being normal again.

David’s hand moves to the trackpad.

But something stops him.

He could almost recite all the quotes from different entrepreneurs’ biographies about how they “weather the storm” during dark times with dedication and perseverance. Those words used to boil his blood, now feel almost irrelevant. But then again, no words can be powerful enough when every fiber of one’s being tells them to give up.

He thinks about the user interviews yesterday. Twelve kids. Most of them said the prototype felt like just another homework app. But there was just one odd duck—a girl, maybe fifteen—who said something different.

She was quiet most of the session. Didn’t raise her hand when they asked for feedback. But as she was leaving, she turned back: “I liked that it asked me what I’m curious about. No one’s ever asked me that before.”

It wasn’t enough though. Twelve users, one lukewarm positive. The investors wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

But she said no one’s ever asked.

Somehow David is reminded of Marcus. The numb look in his eyes over four points on a physics exam. The education system that sorted people like products, measured human beings against each other, to sort out “premium goods”, and eliminate the rest. Never bothered asking what are you interested in? What do you care about? How do you learn? But then again, cog in a machine doesn’t need to have a say.

He thinks about sixteen-year-old David, carrying that vague yearning home from the library. The feeling that the race everyone was running led somewhere he didn’t want to go.

Ten years later, he knows exactly where it leads. He lived it for six years. The promotions, the peer reviews, the performance improvement plans for people who didn’t clear the bar. Kind people, smart people, all running the same race. Competing when they could be creating. Extracting value when they could be building it.

He quit because he couldn’t breathe in that world.

But it’s not enough to quit. No. Someone needs to build something to tell that girl, and millions of others who said no one’s ever asked, that there IS another way.

But he failed. The prototype failed because it wasn’t good enough yet. His heart squeezes. The uncertainty is drowning him as his mind gives him a reality check. But the vision was right. No one should be forced into a standard part of the societal machine. He still believes in it. And the thought of it poked a tiny hole in the darkness.

“I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. So I decided to start over.”

David moves the cursor to the browser tab.

And closes it.

Not just the job posting—the whole browser. Every tab. The application. The prototype. Alex’s encouraging messages. All of it.

The screen goes dark.

For a moment, he sees his own reflection in the black glass. Scruffy beard he hasn’t bothered to trim. Dull skin from sleep deprivation. Eyes rimmed red from staring at the screen day through night. Someone he barely recognizes.

Is he brave or just stubborn? Visionary or delusional? Determined or single-minded?

If he clicks that button, he’ll spend the rest of his life wondering. And sixteen-year-old David—the one who heard Jobs’s voice and felt that yearning—will never get an answer.

David opens a blank document.

He types: “Prototype #2 - What We Missed”

His fingers pause over the keyboard. He cannot tell if his heart is beating from fear or excitement.

Starting again means facing Alex tomorrow and saying: I know it failed, but I want to try again. It means another three months of eighty-hour weeks. Another round of user tests that might go exactly the same way. More savings burned. More missed calls from his mother. More friends who fear to ask.

It means choosing uncertainty over safety. Pain over comfort. The almost certain failure over guaranteed stability.

3 AM is when the walls close in and every choice feels impossible. When the performance ends and you’re alone with the question Jobs asked:

If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?

David looks at the blank document. With all the uncertainties in his life, the answer to this question is strangely clear.

So he starts typing. With the same stubborn, unnameable yearning he felt on those library steps ten years ago.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

As an atheist, he somehow starts to understand what faith feels like. He could swear reciting the same words thousands of times before have never given him this feeling like today. Strange how the darker your life is, the brighter faith seems to shine, David thinks to himself.

He doesn’t know if this will work. Doesn’t know if he’s building something real or just refusing to admit defeat. Doesn’t know if in six months he’ll be out of money and back in an office, this whole chapter of his life swept under the rug as “lessons learned.”

But he knows he’s not done yet.

The users said it felt like another homework app. That means they almost saw it. They were close enough to compare it to something familiar. That’s not complete failure—that’s a gap. “A gap is a bridge yet to be built.” David thinks to himself.

What did they not see? What didn’t he explain? What assumption did he make that they didn’t share?

His fingers move across the keyboard. Not writing code. Just thinking through the problem.

First light still an hour away, but the darkness is thinning.

David types until his neck aches and his eyes burn and the first birds start their morning calls.

He doesn’t have answers yet. Just better questions.

But that’s enough. For now, that’s enough.

Outside, the city begins to wake. The world continuing its rotation whether he’s ready or not.

David saves the document.

As the computer goes to sleep, the cursor blinks on the last line: Tomorrow: Start fresh. Ask different questions. Try again.

End of Chapter 1