I usually write here about Next.js, caching, and the bugs that steal your sleep. But this post is different. I want to share what happens before I write any of that code. The thing that has changed how I think about all of it.
Some developers go for a walk when they are stuck. Some make another cup of coffee. Some keep staring at the same file, convinced the answer is hiding somewhere between two lines of code. I usually go to my garden. Not because I am trying to escape the bug. Because I have learned that some problems become clearer the moment I stop trying so hard to solve them.
That was not something I planned. It happened slowly, the way most true things do. Over the past year, gardening quietly became part of my daily routine. Every morning before I open my laptop, I spend a little time with my plants. Sometimes I am watering them. Sometimes I am adding homemade compost. Sometimes I am just standing there, looking at what has changed since yesterday. It does not sound like work. But in many ways it prepares me for the work that is about to begin.
Yesterday evening, I was stuck. I mean properly stuck. The kind of stuck that sits heavy in your chest. A caching issue that did not quite make sense. Nothing was broken in an obvious way. The application worked. The data loaded. Most things behaved exactly as expected. Except one small detail. A page kept showing stale data long after it should have updated. I checked the obvious places first. Then I checked them again. I read the documentation. I followed the request flow. I looked at every cache boundary I could think of. Everything looked reasonable. When that happens, I have learned not to panic. If I am not making progress anymore, forcing myself to stare at the screen rarely helps. So I closed my laptop. Not because I was giving up. Just because I knew I needed a different perspective.
