Patience, young Padawan

It’s funny to see a package to be delivered by USPS reach the destination facility, only to be diverted away. The package is in San Francisco, I’m in San Francisco, why then did it go up towards Eureka? Some intrepid sorter must have put my purchased item into the wrong bin. Granted, the thing I bought is rather small. I’d be amazed if, say, a television set would have gotten erroneously diverted. The post office is footing that fuel bill, not me.

Good news though: the package has since diverted back to San Fransisco, and I should be getting it today. God willing.

It goes back to the my main theme of 2023: have patience. The lack of patience have time and time again prove to be detrimental. Speeding up the process (the illusion of it, anyways) instead of letting things take their natural course have led to some huge mistakes. Like that time I wiped a whole hard-drive with user data - and no backup whatsoever to support that mistake. I’ve seen the lack of patience cause my friend to get physically injured. It can be quite pernicious.

The hubris is in that we think we can control the future. That getting to the desired outcome as quickly as possible will (finally) make us happy. What we need to remember is that’s a never-ending hamster wheel. You’re always going to be looking towards some future event for satisfaction, one after the next. Let’s say your impatience did get you the result faster: you’ll only be momentarily happy before something else on your list of wants need fast-forwarding.

I was for a split second annoyed that my package was not coming on the originally specified day. But I reminded myself it’s going to be okay to wait the extra few days. The boost of joy from receiving the thing is vanishingly ephemeral.

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Giving life.

No hurries

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.

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Daylight ending time.

Team no rush

One of the best parts about working from home is that I get to set my own pace. When the user I am supporting is not directly in front of me but rather many miles away across the Internet, there is no practical need to rush. Even for issues as urgent as not being able to connect to the campus servers, I am still able to take a moment to make sure I’ve got everything prepared and considered before communicating back to the customer.

I think this deliberate slowing down definitely helps to decrease my stress levels. While I am generally quick on my feet, the details often get lost when I am rushing into a solution or conclusion. When I get some time to parse things through, the approach to a problem becomes more holistic, and the chances of missing something that should have been immediately apparent is lessened. Face-to-face interactions with users - before this whole COVID-19 mess - sometimes don’t allow for such freedom, and I slide towards being more stressed about not being able to come up with an answer than whether the answer is the right one.

This is why I hate playing games with friends that require quick thinking and has a time limit.

Working from home gives me time to think, and I have to say it’s something I am going to miss once we are allowed back on campus. I think a good lesson to carryover from this experience is to try not be in a rush, even if circumstances perhaps won’t grant such leisure. The endgame is to provide excellent support, so taking a bit to time to get it right is worth the initial indignation from a customer that I’ve taken too long.

It’s certainly something to keep in mind.

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They could’ve have gone modern, yet they made it traditional.

Landscape photography involves a lot waiting

The branch of photography I participate in is landscape photography, and the name of the game is waiting. Lots of waiting. To get the best light, to wait out strange weather patterns, and even the general public getting out of the shot, a hearty dose of patience is prerequisite to doing landscape photo work. 

And that can get tiring indeed.

Everyone knows the best light is the hours around sunrise and sunset: blue hour and golden hour, respectively. Getting shots during golden hour isn’t a problem because I’d simply stay out as long as needed. Blue hour however is slightly more difficult because the I'll have to break my circadian rhythm. Bad enough that sunrise is wicked early in the morning, but you have to factor in travel and setup time in addition to that, so obviously there's not going to be much sleep. 

In the trip to Korea last year, in order to get a sunrise shot up on this crater, we had to wake up at 3am because it took an hour to get to the location and another hour to hike up the mountain. Exacerbating the situation it was summer so blue houra was quite a bit earlier than it would’ve been during winter. Well worth the effort but I’m not sure I can do that constantly: I value a proper night’s sleep above a lot of things. 

So golden hour it is for me. 

Then I would pray the weather gods cooperates. This past weekend we wanted to take some sunset hour photos of the Golden Gate Bridge but San Francisco’s famous fog spoiled the party. The entire ocean-facing side was covered in clouds, not giving the sun rays a chance to poke through. Were I adamant about capturing this I would’ve needed to return another day under more favorable weather. 

It’s super time involving, but I love the solitude and peace when I’m out in the field, especially away from the bustle of the city. Something about setting up shop somewhere, music in my ear, and waiting for the perfect moment to appear before the lens: it’s thoroughly meditative. 

Perhaps instead of planing to buy another sports car I should instead purchase a rugged SUV and go overlanding for landscape photos. A thing to think about. 

When the sun isn't cooperating you go long exposure with an ND filter.