My Wrist Guard Is Missing
The Pain That Stayed
I spent forty-five minutes last Tuesday trying to flip a metal splint upside down inside a beige carpal tunnel brace so I could wear it on my right hand instead of my left. Forty-five minutes. The kind of problem-solving that would’ve taken me twelve seconds if I’d bothered to Google it, but I was too stubborn, convinced I could just figure it out. This is what having a computer science degree gets you: the unshakeable belief that everything is just a logic puzzle you haven’t cracked yet.
The brace itself looks like something a JV bowler would wear—all Velcro and foam and vague medical sadness. I have no idea where the hell it even came from. My best guess is it’s been under my bed this whole time, or maybe I left it at my buddy Rafa’s storage unit, or possibly at Mom’s place during one of those weekend visits that blur together. The geographic mystery of the brace is somehow less pressing than the need for it now because my wrist has moved from “occasionally bothersome” to “squatter who refuses to leave.”
This time, the pain just… stayed. Not the occasional numbness. Not even that one time I nearly dropped a coffee mug because my fingers decided to take an unscheduled break. This was the realization that the pain had unpacked its bags, hung pictures on the wall, and was now asking about the Wi-Fi password. And the uncomfortable truth is: pain lingering like this feels familiar. It behaves exactly like my family does when dealing with problems—quiet at first, then permanent.
The Laptop-in-Bed Industrial Complex
Turns out the problem wasn’t the brace—it was the life that required it.
It hurts literally any time I use my laptop not at my desk. Which, since I’ve been working from my couch while navigating this extended unemployment situation, has been approximately ALL THE TIME. Late-night laptop-in-bed sessions, hunched over the trackpad like I’m trying to strangle it into submission, wrists bent at angles that would make any ergonomics consultant quit the industry and find Jesus.
I’ve been unemployed since January 2024, which means my “office” is wherever I can prop open my MacBook. The couch. The bed. That one chair in my bedroom that exists in a weird liminal space between “furniture” and “laundry purgatory.” None of these places was designed for eight-hour-plus coding sessions, but here we are.
The funny thing—and by funny, I mean “cosmically absurd in a way that makes me question my entire relationship with capitalism”—is that I’ll spend $400 on a mechanical keyboard without blinking. I’ll research monitor arms for three hours. I’ll have opinions about standing desk converters.
But asking me to take a ten-minute break to stretch? To walk five feet and sit at my actual desk? Suddenly I’m too busy, too in the zone—whatever excuse lets me keep pretending my body isn’t maintaining receipts for every shortcut I’ve taken.
Pain doesn’t care about my context. It cares about my patterns—especially the ones I inherited.
The Invoice Always Comes
If the Hsiung family were to design their own coat of arms, it would likely feature a bear in the center. Which makes sense because my last name, Hsiung, is 熊, literally “bear” in Chinese. But because it’s our special, crazy family sub-branch, the bear would have to be sitting on the kitchen floor, Indian-style, paws stuffed in its adorable little ears.
Denial is basically the Hsiung family operating system. To pretend nothing is happening until you have no choice but to play your hand because the rest of the cards aren’t valid options, or already used up. My parents did it. I learned it. And my wrist, apparently, is fluent.
Bodies invoice us eventually. Payment terms are non-negotiable: rest and ergonomics only. No substitutions accepted. You can’t Venmo your way out of carpal tunnel. You can’t debug your wrist with more logging.
But nobody tells you this when you’re 25 and convinced you can grind forever. We maintain codebases better than we maintain our own wrists. We’ll refactor legacy code from 2015 before we update the “hustle harder” script we’ve been running since our first startup job.
I turned 49 on Monday —they haven’t shipped me off to the glue factory yet. But I’m now old enough for my body to start sending the kind of system alerts you can’t dismiss.
Gen X got sold invincibility.
Turns out the body didn’t get that memo.
The Hardware Upgrade I Can’t Install
Here’s what I’ve learned: bodies are the one piece of hardware you can’t upgrade out of. No RAM swap when you’re slow. No reinstall when the OS gets corrupted. You’re stuck with version 1.0 forever, and every year it becomes a little more deprecated, a little less compatible with the workload you’re running on it.
I used to joke that I’d work until my body literally gave out, a noble sacrifice to the god of productivity. But bodies don’t wait for permission to break. They just escalate: pop-ups you can’t close, notifications you can’t snooze. “Your wrist has encountered a critical error and needs to restart.” Except there is no restart—just a beige brace and the sinking realization that I’ve spent fifteen years ignoring the warning signs.
The 20-8-2 thing—the Internet-approved routine of 20 minutes of work, 8 minutes of standing, and 2 minutes of stretching—actually works. I resisted it for weeks because it felt… responsible. Too responsible. Corporate-wellness-newsletter responsible.
But my wrist doesn’t care about my aesthetic objections to self-care. It just wants me to stop being an idiot.
Now a new brace sits on my desk, within arm’s reach, a small plastic monument to every time I chose proving something over preserving something.
Getting older in tech is realizing the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” mantra was just undocumented technical debt. You think you’re being hardcore, but really you’re building interest on a loan your body will collect on—with penalties.
Maybe this is just how my family learns: one ignored warning at a time, until the invoice arrives and you’re finally forced to pay attention.
And the invoice? It’s already being drafted.
Please take care of yourself. Your fan base needs you to stay well.
And the easter egg (that's what you young people call it, yes?) of this post is "Velcro and foam and vague medical sadness." Awesome phrase!