Difficult name

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Something makes my name difficult to say and hear. English speakers tend to confuse it with a random Russian last name, the Greek Vasilij, or Vaseline. Bulgarians improvise around it, surprised when they hear it.

On the photo – Vasilen, actually not a bad interpretation because it’s close to a real name. 4/7

How does failure lead to success

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I saw this writing prompt days ago and wanted to share a clever story about how I failed miserably at something, and then it turned out to be okay. However, I couldn’t come up with a good enough story, or even any story. No matter how I twisted it, it sounds like the things that lead to anything remotely positive after a failure were related to:

  • My response to it
  • Having a contingency plan that worked

Regarding the planning part, I pretty much try to make sure that I know the revert command and when I need to run it (or the real-life alternative of revert if it exists). It’s not impossible to fail and not know you did, especially in engineering. A user may report a critical bug weeks after the introduction of it. Bug reports are like cockroaches. By the time you see one, you may already have an infestation.

Regarding the response, I’ve had more chances to develop a strategy. Respond with dignity, take ownership of the failure, and deal with the consequences. Don’t blame others. Try to be objective even if that means putting yourself in a very bad light. When the failure was caused by someone else but it is me under the spotlight, I try to not blame the person but depersonalize the mistake. We can blame a commit for a critical bug, for example, rather than the person who deployed it.

And a couple of sayings:

  • Fall down seven times, get up eight.
  • This, too, shall pass.

Why fear

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Fear makes you click. But does it end with clicking and reading? Found this gem on the Reader today:

French surgeon and neurobiologist, Henri Laborit (1914-1995) drew a clear connection between learning and emotion, showing that without the latter the former was impossible. The stronger the emotion, the more clearly an experience is learned.

Nescafé Japan and Imprint Theory

Triggered productive emotions also help you learn the wrong things because learning is associated with emotion. Previously wrote about this in 2018.