work from home | The Direction of Intention

Reboot [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 10, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I’m not going to lie. Yesterday was textured and difficult. Because our internet connection was spotty – and because our work depends upon a reliable connection – we called our provider to upgrade our service. And, rather than an easy upgrade, we lost our service altogether. And, as I write, almost a full day later, in a world brimming with messages of fast-and-easy, we are still in the internet no-fly zone. After eleven hours, a full five hours on the phone, a trip to the store to get new equipment, ethernet tests on everything but my heart, after a series of pleasant but not-very-helpful service representatives, after the fifteenth (not a joke) suggestion that we “reboot one more time just to see,”we gave up for the night.

Giving up looked like this: “The problem is on our end,” a pleasant tech offered when there was still light in the sky. “There’s a ticket and our engineers are working on it.” Later, much later, after being passed to two of the engineers-that-were-working-on-it, we heard that they had no idea what the problem was. “We could try to reboot one more time,” he said. “Just to see.”

Kerri looked at me, exhausted, and said, “I can’t do it. Not again.” A battle to be waged another day.

Surrender. I’ve learned this lesson again and again in my life. Sometimes it is best to give over. It is best to stop pushing. Sometimes, there is no solution. Time and a bit of sleep, a new day, will bring another point of view. What was impossible yesterday will resolve today.

In surrender, we sat in the quiet night and talked of our day. The quiet. Nothing dinging or binging or pulling at our attention, nothing notifying us of another message. Nothing trying to keep us hooked for the sake of being hooked. The static was gone. The incessant, “Look at me,” of news apps and Facebook and Instagram and… Life as perpetual “Breaking News.” Within the constant pull, the only thing breaking is our focus. We sat and enjoyed a moment when nothing was breaking.

For a moment during the madness, I looked out the window of my office. The day before yesterday the leaves on our tree were still green. It’s late in the season. Yesterday, in a seeming flash, they were vibrant color. They changed overnight. I was taken, as I always am, by the recognition that the best way to learn color is to go outside, take a walk in nature. See. If there is ever a question about, “Does this color work with that color?” – go outside. Look around. The answer is right there. Crimson and dusty grey. A bit of sage green. Charcoal. Polka dots are not a human invention. The patterns are there, too. Texture. See it.

This morning, while we await the visit from our tech who-will-fix-everything, we’ll go outside. We might play in the leaves. We’ll certainly enjoy the moment without the bings and pings and tech-sounds of made-up-importance. We’ll kneel and coo over the polka dots and salmon pink, the electric yellow and revel in the rare simple moments that a good surrender brings.

[*a hefty thank you to Matt the technician who just spent hours sorting out and fixing what ailed our internet. This post is proof positive that we are, at long last, out of the internet-no-fly zone]

read Kerri’s blogpost about POLKA DOTS

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Random, Seeing | Tagged: aarp, artistry, artists, color, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fall color, Flawed Wednesday, give over, internet, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, seeing, service, service representatives, spectrum, story, studio melange, surrender, technicians, the melange, work from home | Leave a comment »

Consider Madness [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 20, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

so much random learning copy

Our scene opens in a global pandemic. A camera collage reveals people, young and old, furiously tapping away at keyboards; through the miracle and misery of technology, people are working from home.

The shot settles on a couple – definitely NOT technology natives – working hard not only to do their work but simultaneously learning the technology necessary to do their work. They are recording audio files, making slideshows, movies, translating files from one format to another format, posting and pulling down the work they just completed because this platform does not accept the same type of file as THAT platform. They nuance, tweak, twist, crash, rinse and repeat. Their learning curve requires ropes, crampons, and pitons (it is a steep climb).

They are also creating language combinations that will certainly make this film unsuitable for small children.

Their technology is old by modern standards. Ancient, really. They are children of depression era parents so they make things last rather than regularly trade up or buy new. The proof is in their kitchen: their stove is almost as old as they are – three of the four burners are still working – so they see no reason to buy something new. Imagine this mindset meeting the computer age! The combined age of their laptops is greater than the age of a graduating college senior. That is to say, although they do not yet know it, they are becoming masters of making old programs work with new software. Electronic-duct-tape-solutions.

Occasionally a madness overtakes them. Their test projects border on the insane, the utterly silly. They cackle. They pop the cork a few minutes earlier than might be advisable. They consider posting their mad-mad test project instead of the sober iteration that they’d intended. They leap from the sanity ledge and plummet into the ridiculous, pulling the rip cord at the last possible moment, slowing their fall. They post the sober work and heave a sigh of relief. Bullet dodged! The absurd remains a secret.

What would the world think if they actually saw the rough draft? The test project? We slowly fade to black as the couple closes their laptops, clinks their wine glasses, refusing to acknowledge the madness that nearly overtook them. They casually walk to their ancient and simplistic stove, asking, “So what shall we make for dinner?”

[music swells. roll credits]