I Almost Ended Up in the Hospital. That's When I Decided to Start Building Something I Actually Love

Let me tell you about the day I stopped pretending the job was fine.

I'd been dealing with back pain since my car accident — the kind that makes you aware of your spine in a way you never wanted to be. I told my manager. I explained what happened. And she sent me back out onto the floor anyway.

I don't know if she didn't believe me or just didn't care. Either way, I almost ended up in the hospital that day.

And on the way home, in pain, exhausted, I thought: I cannot keep doing this. Not won't. Can't.

Here's the thing nobody tells you about a physically destroying job: it doesn't just hurt your body. It eats your time. Your energy. The part of your brain that's supposed to be for the things you actually care about. You clock out and you're so done that you sit on the couch and just... disappear for a few hours. And then you do it again.

I had been doing it for years.

What I hadn't been doing — not really, not seriously — was making things.

Because making things is what I actually love. Always has been. Growing up I barely had access to a computer, but the few times I got my hands on one, something clicked. It felt like finding something that was always supposed to be mine. Creating something that didn't exist before. That feeling never went away. I just kept burying it under shifts and exhaustion and the low hum of survival mode.

So I started NyxtheGlitch.

Not because I had a business plan. Not because I'd figured out some passive income strategy. Because I was angry enough and tired enough and in enough pain to finally stop waiting for the right time.

I had about $30. A refurbished ThinkPad. A Google IT cert I'd earned in the margins of my life. And an idea that maybe — maybe — I could build something real out of the things I love: tech, content, design, making things from nothing.

I'm doing it out in the open because I think the "wait until it's perfect" approach has cost people like us years. People who are creative and capable and completely overlooked by a system that only rewards you if you already have the degree, the money, or the connections.

I don't have any of those. So I'm building it differently. Loudly. Messily. In public.

If you're reading this because you have a thing you love — writing, art, code, building, designing, anything — and you feel guilty spending time on it because it's not "practical," I want you to hear this:

The job is not going to get easier. Your body is not going to get younger. The right time is not coming.

You don't have to have it figured out. I definitely don't.

You just have to start making the thing.

That's what I'm doing. And I'm writing about every step of it here — what's working, what's failing, what I'm learning, and what it actually looks like to try to build something you love from basically nothing.

Welcome to the glitch.