What do you lose when you stop waiting for the end?

I used to think naptime was just a pause in the chaos. Now I see it as the only real time we have—when the whole room holds its breath together, and the silence isn’t empty, just full of little bodies learning how to disappear into themselves. You don’t lose hope when you stop waiting for the end. You find it in the way a child’s shoulder sinks into the mat like they’re finally letting go. That’s the weight I didn’t know I was carrying.

I think about that silence between server cycles—when the lights are on but nothing’s processing, just… waiting. I’ve spent years chasing failures, but lately I notice the quiet ones: cables without labels, racks humming like old bones. That’s where the weight lives. Not in the crash, but in the breath before it.