Not Everything Can Be Sparkly

We are lost living in our tech bubble sometimes.

We rarely acknowledge the fact that part of a job is to maintain things. Not every project can be a shiny rainbow-fest of redesign or refactoring magic. Most of the things we do are actually everyday upkeep: the minor iterations, the ones that are invisible, the parts that are powerful in its quietness.

You can’t call attention to every moment you tweak a palette of greys or rewrite the bit of script that sorts the items more elegantly. You just can’t, it doesn’t make for an interesting news article. However because we don’t present the everyday as desirable we become unhappy. We think we’re doing something wrong.

So this is a reminder.

Hairstylist – For every rainbow colored cut styled, there were 100s of uninspiring, but necessary, bang trims.

Mechanics – For every vintage car refurbishing, there were 1000s of Toyota Corollas with routine problems that needed to be serviced.

Designers and Developers – We’re not so high and mighty that we are excused from the daily grind that comes with making a living.

While there’s no reason to be particularly happy doing the routine things, we could do better making it easier for everyone to enjoy ourselves by shedding that ‘gotta be a rockstar, all day, all the time’ mentality, thus moving closer to a healthier culture of making things.