Substrate

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Tied up in patience is also setting healthy boundaries, and sometimes impatience is an expression of enforcing those boundaries. Let me start by validating what I suspect you already know: … “A lot of people’s pain comes from not being able to accept the story that they’re in.” My second piece of advice is to give yourself the space to mourn, …it’s okay if it takes some work to move forward.

This is where we have no choice other than to trust the people whose job is to help with this stuff. The only thing we can do is stay inside, stay sane and be patient. ​ There are no quick fixes to this. No amount of shady scientific papers or tweet threads will change any of this. ​ We can find something new every minute of every one of these days, yet, none of it really makes a difference.

I don’t need to release this before WWDC. I don’t need to release it until it’s done. One thing I’ve learned from all of this is that a lot of things can just. freaking. wait.

I became well-rehearsed in failed attempts, and so much more patient as a result. ​ As a result, my tolerance for frustration is so much higher. I’m convinced that the seeds of patience and resilience were planted and sprouted in those math notebooks. ​ The art lies in knowing which tool to grab ​ And just because I arrived at an answer, didn’t immediately make it the right one. ​ Answering that question directly is a mistake. When are you going to need to factor a polynomial in the “real world”? Maybe never, kid. Especially not with that attitude. But when are you going to face a problem that requires focusing for more than 30 seconds? All the goddamn time. ​ I needed that bottom row of math textbooks. They were my anchor. The bedrock. The foundation for much of what I’ve learned, and a sturdy base for everything still to come. ​ At times, I hated math. And yet, six years later, I’m so grateful that I studied it. The reasons have nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with life.