At about 10:00 a.m. Friday morning, I did something that was not very well thought out—like at all. I tried to rename the home folder of my computer. Don’t worry, I also made sure to do it 30 minutes before a call too. 🤦♀️
I should have known better. Really, I should have. I’ve been in some form of tech support and at the front of the technology bell curve for most of my adult life. I get how computers work. And yet, I still did it.
After a quick reboot and mini-panic attack, the overwhelming relief hit because I didn’t lose everything on my hard drive. Thank the computer gods.
But I didn’t get away scot-free either. I lost all of my profile and user settings: how my browser is configured, my password manager logged in across applications, my dock and app organization and sizing, my time tracking application that normally auto-starts for me.
All of the conveniences of my setup and its evolution over the last year was just… gone.
(Don’t worry, I made it to the meeting without issue at least. lol)
For the rest of the day, I felt every bit of friction with each mouse stroke.
My first instinct was how to restore everything exactly how it had been: “If I could just get it back where it was, then I can function smoothly again.”
I had other priorities to get done on Friday so I did what any of us would do—I just dealt with it. I told myself I’d work on it Sunday. I could at least make sure I was going into the week better equipped.
So I sat down this morning and started backing up documents. That’s when I recognized that “If I could just get back…” feeling. I’ve had it come up many times over the years in various forms. “If I just had more energy…” or “If I just had more time…” or “If I just had the capacity I used to…”
It made me pause, and I decided to take the time while it was backing up everything to reflect and write this newsletter. Because historically, that line of thinking means an old pattern or way of thinking is rearing up.
It meant I needed to do the thing I help clients do: I needed to be asking myself a better question than “How do I get back to the way things were?”
This is where I landed instead:
“What part of my old setup was actually supporting me well and what wasn’t?”
Because my previous setup wasn’t frictionless, it was just the devil I knew.
You can call it kismet, good timing (or bad depending on the perspective), or we can blame it on Uranus stirring up some shit by causing sudden endings and changes. Hell, maybe we just call it all three!
Whatever the reason, I’m choosing to use this as an opportunity to run a new SEED experiment:
Set the Intention: Notice where friction comes from missing the necessary support from my previous setup, and where it comes from something simply being unfamiliar or different from before.
Experiment: Reset the essential apps, logins, and layout to stay functional and spend the next 2 weeks taking note of friction and solutions, and making little shifts where time allows.
Evaluate: At the end of the 2 weeks, review notes and determine where time needs to be spent on any significant updates to be supportive.
Decide: Will I spend another 2 weeks on this, or is it good to just let it run from there as is? (I suspect I’ll drop it from there, but let’s see what happens.)
Off the top of my head, I know of a few apps I won’t reinstall. And there are many I know I can’t live without. Some I’ll wait until I need them again before I re-download.
But beyond that, I’m leaving things open to see what changes. To stay curious enough about the process that I don’t get too wrapped up in what the outcome will be.
Often times, both in my own life and when working with clients, SEEDs appear from an issue someone brings to you, something you actively desire, or something bothering you enough you’d like to change it.
But sometimes you don’t find the SEED first. The SEED finds you.
TO SIT WITH:
What have you gotten so used to working around that you’ve stopped noticing the effort it takes?
Currently Obsessed
RomCom-aissance: My nervous system can’t do horror and the horror bend to every genre right now is something I’m both baffled and fascinated by. But alongside it romcoms are having a bit of a renaissance which I am 1000% here for. This weekend I watched You, Me, and Tuscany (a fantastic classic romcom trope and I will watch anything with Halle Bailey in it), and One Night Only (the trailer made it look good, and it asks you to care about the people in it more than the logic or logistics of the world it’s set in, but I think it’s gotten a bad rap—for me, it was even better than I’d expected).
On the hunt: I get the why, but I hate when companies reformulate. My favorite collagen powder (Promix) recently reformulated their unflavored variation and repackaged. What used to seamlessly blend into my coffee now makes a very noticeable beef-y flavor to that is just… 🤢. (Trust me, I know why that happens, but it didn’t used to.) So I’m on the hunt for a new collagen powder! If you have a fav, I’m all ears!
Paper Houses: I started paper art this year starting with some premade templates and eventually I’ve started designing my own. My latest project was a fold open-dollhouse of the Frell manor from Ella Enchanted. I’m still very much a novice, but I fell down the internet rabbit hole right into Ally McGlynn’s page and had to share her beautiful paper dollhouses.
