I recently designed my new website for my photography. It wasn’t just coming up with a design, it was implementing that design in a pretty complicated piece of PHP software. When I started, I didn’t really so much know what I was doing. There was a lot of the coding that I didn’t know how to do. Occasionally, I’d realize that I’d made a big mess. A big frustrating mess.
That happened three or four times. Each time, I’d pour tons of hours into the work before realizing I’d made some pretty big mistakes that were best solved by scrapping everything. So that’s what I’d do.
Each time I started over, I had a slightly better idea of where I was going. And, each time I started over, all the frustration and difficulty associated with my work would instantly dissipate, the moment I decided to scrap it. I would enjoy working from the ground up, building on new skills I’d learned from the last failed attempt.
I suppose that it’s sort of the epitome of "pick yourself up and try again”.
Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that. And I find that the most difficult times in life are when you realize that you’ve learned a lot, but you can’t go back and put your knowledge to use.
I suppose that it’s part of providence, but like many things, I don’t understand it.
