In the valley

How the days fly by when you aren’t working. So again, I’m starting a little bit late on this missive. But a BIGGGGG milestone’s been passed. I, somehow, managed to fix all the crazy bugs on Gimp 2.99 MacOS edition so now python plugins work and it’s not throwing crazy crashes around. Pretty nice.

But then, the community around Gimp pulled me out of my tailspin, and pointed out that it might have to do with where the files are located. With that little trigger and a MacOS VM I was on the road to recovery. Hard coded paths, my friends, are Not Good.

And there was a lesson here for me. A lesson I’ve taught hundreds of others, but I needed it this time: there is no fast path to results.

Sometimes you have to reach the darkness, reach the point where you question whether it can ever be done before it is possible to find results.

Call it rabbit hole-ing, call it obsession, or call it what I’ve always called it: the valley of the shadow of death.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil

What these ancient words (they were written in 1000 BC) have said to me is that any sufficiently difficult and challenging project (whatever its nature) will at some point become hopeless. Every project.

And hopeless is hopeless. The project hits a point where it looks like it was a mistake. It appears that the the best action would be to turn around and run away.

And in that moment, the only guide is faith; the faith and belief that was there when the project started, when the journey began. That’s it. And in that moment a choice must be made: give up and turn around (incredibly reasonable given the circumstances) or continue. You can’t know if the project will succeed. Everything points at the contrary. And so you must bring the faith from the beginning to guide you and convince you to continue, or you must give up. It’s that simple.

Every project hits this. And remember, some projects should be stopped. That’s why that moment is so difficult.

For me, in a small way, this happened with Gimp 2.99 for MacOS.

Python kept crashing. The `.gir` files had problems. I had no idea what was wrong, but nothing I tried worked. But I kept going, and my and the community’s faith led me to keep going. And it got figured out.

Why are golfers and pub patrons alike? They both like to get a round.

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