Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Waiting is undervalued

     It might come as a surprise, but I DO have standards. Occasionally, I will write something, then squint at it, and think, "No. Not that. That just will not do." I don't delete the draft, however. It sits there, waiting for a moment like now, when need lowers the bar. Whoops, I mean when the situation changes. A long day Monday beavering away at a project for the paper. So that now there's no bullet in the chamber, no gas in the tank. But this, from the end of July, just sitting there. Not much, perhaps, but it'll have to do.

     Sometimes you just have to wait.
     While I am not in the business of offering canned life advice, the truth of that struck me anew Wednesday morning. I was suffering through a work situation too trivial to be worth recounting. I knew in a few hours it would be completely resolved, and it was.
     At the same time, I looked at the photo atop my blog, and it was especially blurred. A few weeks ago, Blogger suddenly stopped allowing me to post a photo behind my blog title. I went on-line, searching for a fix, and it turned out that in reconfiguring itself to better appear on phones, Blogger had made it so any photo posted with the heading would be small and off to the side.
     I was surprised at how irked I was, and tried all sorts of fixes, including manipulating the HTML code directly, which is the computer version of trying to cure a headache by trepanning, particularly when you don't know what you're doing.
     The best I could come up with is posting the photo under the heading, though it was slightly blurred. This, the online chatterverse assured me, was another bug.
The past returned
     A few weeks went by. Then Wednesday I pulled the blurry photo down, and tried the photo behind the heading, which hadn't worked when attempted a dozen times before. This time it did work. I have no idea why. My assumption is that either Blogger healed, or someone there harkened to the cries of pain online and fixed it.
     I also learned something about myself. Judging from the bubble of honeyed happiness that rose within me to see the old way regained, I must like this blog a whole lot more than the woe-is-me-how-can-I-go-on? annual assessment I give at the end of June. Because it felt great to see its Georgia serif type set out against a photo once again. I doubt any readers will notice. But I sure noticed, and was glad, and all I had to do was wait.

1 comment:

  1. I have to confess that I enjoy these under-the-bar personal effusions. Makes me think I know Neil as well, if not better, than I know my own siblings. And of course, I always learn something from his mistakes, even if he doesn't.

    john

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