Opened code I wrote six months ago and it was genuinely bad, and I felt great about it

Had to go back into a service I built in month two of this job. Conditionals nested four deep, a function called handleData, comments explaining what the line does instead of why it exists.

And I sat there and just wasn't embarrassed. Six months ago I couldn't see any of it. Now it's obvious on sight. That gap is the progress, and it's the only progress marker I've found that doesn't lie to me the way streaks and problem counts do.

Refactored it. In another six months I'll probably hate that version too, which I'm choosing to find encouraging.