I’m trying to think of the feeling. At first I was thinking that feeling of running toward a door that keeps getting further, but, while similar, I’m going to go with driving. Like in any horror movie where the teens get lost in the middle of nowhere:
You’re driving, and everything is great. You make the next turn–and of course, you’re using a paper map or printed pages from google maps because either cell phones don’t exist yet or more realistically, you are in a dead zone–pun intended as it is in all the horror movies. Unbeknownst to you, you had actually made a wrong turn, but because you didn’t know, you kept on going and make the next few seemingly logical turns.
But you should have reached your destination by now. You’ve been driving for hours (and hours since the wrong turn).
Okay, so what? It’s taken a little longer than you’d have liked, but you’re not lost. You have a good sense of direction and you know where you’re going–it’s probably this next turn up ahead.
Suddenly it’s late, you need to stop driving soon, and perhaps you’ve submitted to the idea that you should probably head back to where you came from–but ugh, all that lost time and would you even be able to make sense of it again once you got there?.
The irony does not escape be when I say that coding is sometimes a lot like a dumb teen horror movie. One of those movies that you know is stupid, but you actually do find it entertaining.
This morning before stand up, I’d made great progress on my cc-web-app template. In fact, I believe that I even had the favicon showing up in my localhost tab. Shortly after standup, i made a wrong turn. I was unaware I’d made this wrong turns, and so I continued to make several turns after that. Then I realized the favicon was gone, so what did I do? I made more turns!
Bittersweetly, while, several of those turns were actually productive, I watched the problems in the browser get worse and worse. The thought of going back to base where I was this morning was too painful–and yes, I’d committed–but ya know what, git is a horror movie of its own.
Git is great! And yes, I stashed, but then i edited, and popping at that point was going to require a merge of stuff I didn’t want to commit, and merging requires committing.
It was about 230pm, when i decided I should seek a little help to get me back on track, but i noticed that I’d missed a ping from Josh about a half hour earlier. I knew he had iteration this afternoon, so I wanted to make sure he was through any blocks that were in front of him. Once we were done, it was after 3pm, and I knew Micah was on another business call, and then I had to go to swimming lessons for the boys. So I will ask tomorrow–although, i may go ahead tonight and do a crazy thing and stash again and pull my last commit which may have had the favicon…
Rex & Leo:
Swimming lessons have been a hoot, but let’s go back in time two years.
In June of 2019, I enrolled Rex in survival swimming lessons. It was young, but we had a pool. Now, i did have three locks on it’s main entrance, but drowning is the second leading cause of death for children under five, surpassed only by car accidents. When it comes to pools & children, it’s not hard to get a little distracted and take your eyes away for a moment, which is why on pool days with friend, i never really relaxed–my only focus was on those boys, and that was exhausting.
It’s not that I didn’t trust others to watch them, but my rule with Keith was that on pool days, either he or I had to be with the boys. As I said, it’s not hard to get distracted, and when kids aren’t an everyday part of your life, then it’s even easier. None of our friends at the time had kids, and thus could not understand the liability of or the effort required for watching them in such a situation, so i made a rule that would ensure neither Keith and I nor any of our friends would ever be in that situation where a distraction happened.
Anyway, Rex was in swimming lessons, and he was young. This was survival swimming that taught babies muscle memory to turn on to their backs and yell for help. It gave them just one thing to do, if the occasion ever arised, so they wouldn’t have to think about what to do next. It made sense–it was also baby torture. That week and a half of subjecting baby Rex to that was likely the worst of my life. I don’t think I even finished the lessons. It was important, but this was a lot.
This year, while Leo is only a couple months older than Rex was during his water-torture-lessons, I enrolled them both in prose swimming survival lessons. We no longer have a pool, but I believe that knowing the basics of how to swim is life critical.
Perhaps from a deep memory, Rex remembered swimming lessons, as he was terrified. On day three, he even ran away from me and tried to hide in a corner. By the end of that day though, he was asking to go again–he’s learned to hold his ’bubble’.
Everyday since, he’s continued to ask to go again, and while all last week, he was very-literally volunteering his baby brother to go first for everything despite the class having five additional students, today he was volunteering to go first and to go again. Sometimes he wouldn’t even wait for the instructor to be ready to catch him before he jumped.
By volunteering Leo to go first, because this was actually very funny, I will explain. On day 3 or 4, a new skill was being taught. The instructors explained how to do it, and then asked “Who wants to go first?” Rex excitedly exclaimed, “Leo!” I assure you that Leo did not want to go first if even at all.
But for Leo’s sake, this was not baby torture–at least not after the first couple of dunks after which he learned to hold his ‘bubble’.
In fact, both of them have done very well. I am always amazing when Leo actually takes a breath when the instructor counts–he’s learned that whether he wants to or not, the’s going under, but he’s also developed trust that they will be there.
Today, they went in fully dressed–shoes and all–with the task of getting to the step and getting the wall. They both actually enjoyed this a lot.