Vacation crescendo
The usual pattern again. Everyone wants to deliver important projects before the vacation and the final weeks up until the last Friday feels like a metronome that speeds up exponentially. Let us also throw a couple of urgent surprise problems that require you to drop everything and hyper-focus without interruption for 8 hours straight. No, we are not saturated enough, we also need sick kids that must go to the emergency room, dogs with wounds, and a computer that blows itself up in the middle of an important delivery. Then I went outdoors, the rain started pouring and I inhaled a mosquito and almost puked. What a wonderful day!
Ten years ago, my past self would have been a complete mess. Not a nice person to be around. Today, a bit older and hopefully wiser, I feel quite calm despite all the aforementioned problems. Yesterday was the worst day, but I did the smartest thing I have done in years to cope. I brushed my teeth and went to bed with my one-month baby girl who have just learned how to smile, and we slept for eight hours. Except for a couple of nightly diaper changes of course. Thus, I woke up with fully charged batteries this morning and I know it is getting old, but oh boy what a difference a good night of sleep can make. It is insane. Especially since I have been a bit sleep deprived for some weeks now. Mostly my own fault though, but the contrast is amazing. It feels like an extra 10-20 IQ points for sure. And energy. All these curve balls keep coming, but somehow, I have learned to snap back to normal much faster than my past self could ever dream of. When you get old you trade energy for wisdom – hopefully – and this ability to snap out of a negative mood ASAP is probably one of the most important aspects of wisdom there is. There is no point to run around angry. It serves no purpose.
While talking to my wife tonight, I realized that one of the reasons I can snap back faster is that I am better prepared. I have built my Ark. For example, my crucial work computer just died when I was signing out today. I mean seriously died. It gave a bunch of blue screens, black screens and told me that my boot drive was corrupt and windows could not start anymore and the PC needs to be recovered. Then, I tried to enter BIOS and the screen was all glitchy graphics and then it froze. Now, I am greeted by a 100% black screen when I flick the power switch. Nothing. Of all my hundreds or thousands of tinkering hours with computers, this one might be the most severe system breakdown I have seen. I suspect a dead motherboard or a dead GPU. I truly hope the motherboard is OK, because to RMA that would be a nightmare. I would have to tear down my whole build and it will take a ton of hours. Any other component is modular and quickly replaceable.
I am currently in the most demanding work time of the year and my most important tool is now 100% dead. It is a small disaster. However, I love my past self sometimes. Because that guy has prepared not one, but two other fully operational backup computers with every engineering application and programs, all the logins prepped and ready. I will just connect the backup machine and pick up where I left off with almost zero downtime. I had even installed a separate 2,5” SSD drive for all my work-related stuff and in a couple of minutes every file I needed were available on the backup machine. This is what building an Ark is all about. The flood comes every now and then in various shapes and forms. We all know that. My backup computers are a perfect analogy. If I did not have a backup machine and even a second backup machine for my first backup machine, I would be in a complete and perfect state of panic right now. Instead, I am calmly looking at the beautiful midnight sun while writing this post. For mission-critical systems I think triple redundancy is a no-brainer. I am beyond grateful today that I thought about this over a year ago and acted accordingly.
It is invaluable to first finish a hellish work week that has the potential to stress you to death, and then calmly go to sleep with your little baby girl. They grow up so fast, every second is valuable. Thank you, past self, for allowing me to be present where it matters.