One thing I was constantly reminded of last week is to have a bit of patience. Things and events are going to take the time they need. I cannot control it. I cannot make it go faster. Trying to control how quickly the future arrives is utterly futile. So is betting my happiness on that future arriving. This is how you speed-run through life, the days seemingly becoming shorter and shorter.
If something is taking longer than I would want, I should simply enjoy it for what it is, to immerse myself within that ambiguity.
Because forcing speed out of life is how mistakes are made. Last week I was working on reviving a Dell workstation at work. The going was super slow, each tactic I’ve tried not only takes a long time, but have not achieve the result I wanted. Nearing the home stretch of a process, I made a simple but critical error. This resulted in complete data lost on one of the hard-drives. There’s no anguish in our IT support profession quite like having to inform a user their precious data is gone. There is no rewind button.
Looking back now, I’m not sure why I was in such a hurry. Honestly, once I’m done with the workstation there will be other tickets to work on (as there is this week). It’s not as if I get to relax and read a book or something. I think I was just frustrated that my initial troubleshooting steps have returned very little. A punch to the ego that perhaps I’m not as competent as I think I am (which is true). Unfortunately, that frustration led to an enormous mistake.
In work and in life: remember to slow down and be patient.
Daylight ending time.