I’m in the final stretch of pregnancy. My body has been blessedly mobile until recently, but some of the most demoralizing changes are almost old news by now.

A few months back, I lost my ability to draw due to pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome. This is a temporary impairment, but a hard one to accept when drawing has always been a part of my life, how I see the world, how I process things. It’s forced me to consider how I rely on drawing and what kind of things I can produce without it.

This has mostly brought me closer to code. I’ve had a lot of fun laying the groundwork for a new project almost entirely in code and lousy placeholder scribbles. In my near-decade making games and despite my own stubbornness, I’ve learned a bit about how to code more effectively and more in line with my vision. The equations take shape in my mind more immediately than before. I sit back and regard my code while recouping the blood in my fingers (typing still isn’t easy, but stopping to think about it helps).

Often, the code changes my vision in surprising ways. Not necessarily because I’ve hit my technical limits (I can always brute-force it with something uglier/less efficient) but because something elegant has emerged.

The term “vibe coding” depresses me, because it sounds fun - it sounds like what I’ve been doing! - but it’s not. I’m using code to cut to a feeling. Maybe I’m in the sweet spot right now of what seasoned programmers risk losing: the balance between form and efficiency. I occasionally catch myself trying too hard to get at the latter. Ultimately, the efficiency will only matter down the line, when I’m collaborating and bug-fixing and cursing myself for not thinking about it more. But where it really counts, figuring out what a game IS, I can’t let it dominate.

Does any of this make sense? It’s possible the baby will come, and I’ll look at my months of code and wonder why the hell I thought this was a game. Maybe all I’m doing is compulsively feathering the nest, but it feels right for now. In a few weeks (but really, any time now) I’ll get to see her and hold her. It’ll all have been worth it, and it’ll all have been important in some way, whatever it was.