That's The Way It's Has To Be

Within the last couple of week, I believe that I have learned a lot about life. For those of you who are very literal people, I will qualify this statement by saying that you can learn everything there is to know even in one lifetime. But here are the things I did learn.

1)You should look at what you can and can't do very objectively.

This is something that I have learned to do recently.

A former employer called me up a few weeks ago and asked if I could install a satellite dish for him. The catch here for me was, I hadn't installed or even seen these dishes in about three or four years. I had been fairly capable when it was my job, so I felt confident that even though it had been a long time, I could still do it, especially since this former employer had no one else to call for this particular piece of equipment.

I get out to the job, which is between 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get to from my house (this after having a minor panic attack concerning my ability to point the dish with a meter I'm not familiar with) and get to work. The first thing I did was asses the job, and it was determined that I needed to come back with a non-penetrating roof mount, which I didn't have. So I came back the next day.

The next day I got there and got to work. It all went well until I got to the part of the install where I would point the dish. I got the meter up there and set to work, sweeping the dish back and forth, up and down, and got nothing. The meter, wasn't telling me whether or not I was getting closer or farther away from the target. I did this for 2 1/2 hours(this after about 3 hours on the install already). No joy. I promise the client I would return the next day with a better meter.

The next day came, and I was trying to help my former employer and his office figure out what meter we actually needed, and found that we couldn't get the one we needed until the next day.

By the next morning, we did have a different one, but it was only a newer model of the one I had been using. I was distressed about that for only a few minutes. I had the chance to play around with it and get to know how it functioned, and became confident that when I got it out to the job it would go one way or the other in magnificent fashion, but really hoping it would go my way and work. But when I got it out there, it didn't.

That was the punch line. Here's the moral that I drew from it.

I knew that at one point, I was really good at installing satellite dishes. Three or so years without even laying eyes on the dish in question however, made me rusty. That includes loosing the ability to strip wires and put fittings on them, knowing how wide to drill holes, knowing the troubleshooting intricacies of the modem and so forth. I had forgotten all of that, and just figured that it would come back because I needed to remember. That was not the case. I had to admit to myself that I didn't really know how to do something that I used to know. Knowing my own limitations, as well as talents, is really a value, just as much as patience is.

And if you're wondering what that picture is, it was taken coming down a Utah mountain pass on one of my many trips out to the job site.