I Can See My Success in My Mind’s Eye

Source: Dev.to

The Illusion of Success

I can see it clearly. My app is live, bug‑free, and users are raving. Investors are calling. My GitHub repo has stars pouring in like confetti at a parade. My IDE never crashes, my build scripts run flawlessly, and every pull request I submit gets merged instantly.

…Then I open my terminal.

Reality hits harder than a failed npm install. My mind’s eye is a liar. My code doesn’t compile. My API returns 500. And somewhere, a junior dev is laughing at my commit message: fix everything.

Embrace the Errors

Every developer has that vivid vision of success. But success in tech isn’t a mental snapshot—it’s a series of iterative bug fixes, Stack Overflow deep‑dives, and “why is this happening?” moments at 2 AM.

Yes, visualize your success. But also visualize the errors, the unexpected nulls, the CI/CD pipeline explosions. If you can imagine both, you’ll be ready for anything.

Debugging as Meditation

Debugging is meditation for developers. The more cryptic the error, the more you grow spiritually. Your mind’s eye might see the perfect solution, but your console sees the truth:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token '}'

Celebrate Tiny Wins

Remember that console.log('it works!') moment? That’s success. Deploying a patch without breaking something else? Even bigger. The mind’s eye dreams big—but your keyboard deserves applause too.

The path to success is paved with commits. Some of them are ugly. Some of them are horrifying. But every commit is a step closer to your mind’s eye masterpiece.

If you can laugh at your 37th merge conflict of the day, you’re already winning. Your mind’s eye might see glory—but your code might see chaos. And that’s okay.