I Spent My Silicon Million-Dollar Salary and Still Felt Empty: A Quiet Wake in the Machine

I never thought I’d find meaning in the spin of a slot machine—until I realized it was just me, alone at 2 a.m., staring at a screen that promised joy but delivered only static.

I grew up between two worlds: one where my mother danced to samba rhythms on the streets of Brooklyn, and another where my father quoted Joyce in quiet libraries. We had no fortune—but we had feeling. My first job at an SaaS startup taught me to optimize user behavior like code optimized for efficiency. But algorithms don’t care if you’re tired.

I designed interfaces that tracked emotional thresholds—RTP rates, scatter symbols, wilds—as if they could replace human connection with data points. I believed higher return meant more peace. But every win felt borrowed. Every free spin echoed a question I didn’t know how to answer: ‘Is this all there is?’

The machines were never rigged—they were just honest in their randomness. And so was I.

Last week, Muse—the cat who sleeps on our apartment’s top floor—knocked over my notebook. On its pages: sketches of symbols that looked like laughter after midnight.

We aren’t using tools—we’re being redefined by them.

If you’ve ever sat still while the system spun… tell me when you last felt alive.