The thing nobody tells you about a career in software is how much you start to crave something that grows on its own time, not yours.
For me that's the garden. I love plants — the daily, undramatic tending of them — and I love flowers most of all. A bougainvillea in full throw is my favourite kind of show-off: it asks for almost nothing and then explodes into colour anyway, all at once, on its own schedule. My hibiscus is the opposite — fussier, more conditional, handing out one perfect bloom at a time as if it's doing me a favour.
Between them they've taught me more about patience than any deadline ever did. You can't rush a plant. You can only show up, pay attention, give it the right conditions — and then get out of the way and let it do the part that was never yours to control.
After a day of things that break and bugs to chase, that turns out to be a very particular kind of relief.