This week I'm in Algarve, in the south of Portugal.

I've been coding from the beach.

I know. Very nerd.

Part of me keeps judging it. What am I doing? Is this too much? Am I failing at resting properly? Why can't I just disconnect like a normal person?

But then I also wonder... how different is it really from reading a book? In some ways it feels better. I'm not just consuming. I'm making things, exploring ideas, following curiosities.

Whenever the girls go into a store, I open the terminal and start vibe coding. Using Termux on Android, SSHing into my server.

It is awkward enough that the whole thing becomes a little funny. Typing on a phone is already bad, but in Termux autocorrect doesn't work, so I end up sending the agent these broken, typo-filled little texts that would be almost unintelligible to a normal human being.

Later I remembered I could just use remote control with Claude, since I was already connected through Tailscale. That made typing much easier. Still slightly ridiculous, but much easier.

The battery also doesn't last the whole day. So even this very nerdy setup comes with a natural limit. At some point the phone is dying, the sun is reflecting on the screen and the ocean is right there.

So I keep asking myself: am I hurting myself by not disconnecting?

I don't think resting always means doing nothing. A lot of the time it just means changing the kind of activity, the pace, the context, the pressure.

There is a difference between sitting in the same chair, under the same roof, staring at the same machine because you have to, and standing near the beach with a phone in your hand, poking at ideas because you feel like it. There is a difference between obligation and play.

That doesn't mean the question goes away. I still don't fully know at what point something enjoyable quietly turns into compulsion. At what point "I'm just having fun" becomes another way of never really stopping. Because I know that my brain never really stops.

But at least right now, it does feel recharging.

Maybe not in the pure, empty-headed sense people usually imagine when they talk about rest. Not total silence, not full disconnection, not the idealized version of vacation where your brain completely powers down. But still recharging in its own way.

I am having fun. I can stop at any time. I can look up, put the phone away, and go into the water.

Maybe that is the real test.

Not whether I touched a terminal on vacation, but whether the thing still feels light. Whether I am choosing it freely. Whether I can leave it behind for the ocean without resistance.