Because closing the laptop at 10am felt wrong. It felt like stealing.
My dad asked me once if I was doing something illegal.
He didn't say it mean. He said it the way a man who poured concrete for thirty years says it when his son tells him he makes good money tapping on a laptop from a beach town. Like he wanted to believe me but the math didn't add up in any world he understood.
I laughed it off. Told him it's just the internet, Dad. Digital products. People buy stuff online. He nodded the way he nods when he doesn't want to ask again.
That was two years ago. I still think about it every time I check my Stripe account.
Not because he hurt my feelings. Because part of me agrees with him. Some months I look at the numbers and I don't feel proud. I feel like I got away with something.
That's the trap. You build something that actually works without grinding you into the ground and then you can't trust it. Because everything you were raised on says money is supposed to cost you something. Sweat. Hours. Your knees. Your back. Your weekends. If it didn't take those from you, it doesn't count.
I grew up watching my parents work themselves raw. Nine kids. Two jobs each. My mom cleaned houses six days a week and came home smelling like other people's kitchens. My dad did construction until his hands looked like they belonged to someone twenty years older. They never complained. That wasn't even on the menu. You worked. You came home tired. You did it again.
And I absorbed something from that without realizing it. Not just the work ethic. The suffering ethic. The belief that if something comes easy, you should be suspicious of it. That ease is earned through exhaustion, not built into a regular Tuesday.
So now I have this life I designed. Two hours of real work most days. Good income. No boss. No commute. And I carry around this low-grade guilt like a hum I can't turn off. Like I'm getting away with something. Like someone's going to tap me on the shoulder and say okay, that's enough, back to real work.
I caught myself last month doing something embarrassing. I was in Puerto Escondido, finished everything I needed to do by 10am, and instead of walking to the beach I sat at my laptop for another three hours doing nothing. Rearranging folders. Checking analytics I'd already checked. Just sitting there looking busy for nobody. Because closing the laptop at 10am felt wrong. It felt like stealing.
From who? I don't have a boss. I don't have investors. Nobody is tracking my hours. But my dad's hands are in my head. My mom's schedule is in my head. And they're both telling me this isn't how it's supposed to work.
You've done this. Maybe you finished everything by noon and felt guilty taking the afternoon off even though nobody cared. Maybe you told someone your hours and immediately followed it with a speech about how hard you worked to build this, like you needed to justify the ease. Maybe you padded your calendar with busywork just to feel like you'd earned the right to stop.
We inherited a story about what work is supposed to look like. And when our work stops looking like that story, we don't question the story. We question ourselves.
I brought this up with my mom a few months back. Not directly. I just told her I felt weird about how easy some days are. She was quiet for a second and then said something I haven't stopped turning over.
She said we didn't work that hard so you could feel bad about working less.
She said it plain, like it was obvious. Like I was being a little ridiculous. And maybe I am. Maybe the entire point of what they sacrificed was so their kids could have days that didn't break them. And here I am, picking up rocks and stuffing them in my pockets just so the walk feels hard enough to count.
I still sit at my laptop too long some mornings. I still feel the hum. But I'm trying to let the ease be what it is instead of evidence that something's wrong with me.
My dad poured concrete so his kids wouldn't have to. The least I can do is stop apologizing for having clean hands.
— Best, Jose
