Overpass Experiences – The Eric Wroolie Blog

Striving to be “Open”

July 1, 2022 by wroolie Leave a Comment

I remember reading years ago about approaching life being open rather than closed. I think I read it in one of the e-Myth books by Michael Gerber. It’s something I think about a lot and I strive to be open as much as I can.

Being open is

“This will work. I just haven’t found the solution yet.”
“Everyone is doing their best. He’s just having a bad day.”
“I can figure this out.”
“Let’s give it a try.”

Being closed is

“This is impossible.”
“I’m surrounded by jerks. I don’t even want this job.”
“I’m not capable.” “I’m too old.” “I’m not smart enough.”
“I’m not the kind of person who does things like that.”

I think, as software developers, we get to see this difference in this attitude more than most people. We HAVE to be open. We have to know a solution is out there. Otherwise, nothing gets done.

Every developer knows what it’s like to be looking at code that SHOULD work, but isn’t. And that’s frustrating. I mean, I’ve seriously thrown fits like a little kid at my computer when I couldn’t get something to work. So, I take a breath, walk the hallways (or around the building) and come back to it. The one thing I can never do is think the task is impossible.

As software developers, we are used to the “Eureka!” moments. They only come because we knew an answer was out there and we didn’t give up.

There have been so many times that I have been given a project by a frustrated business owner whose developer said something was not possible. Or… by a developer who jumped to a conclusion about why something was failing (usually, it’s something out of their control like disk corruption or a virus– but that’s never it). I usually am able to fix it. I have fresh eyes and an open perspective.

But this perspective applies in other areas of our lives too. I talk to developers all the time who are ready to give up on their app project because “this just isn’t working” or “maybe this used to work, but it doesn’t anymore”. There’s a solution out there. They just need to find it.

It even applies to health and fitness. I have been dealing with shoulder pain from working out. It bothers me. I turn 50 next month. I’m afraid I overdid the training and did some damage. I have had many people tell me “you’re not 18 anymore… you’re body can’t handle what it used to.” This closed me off. It made me limit myself. Then, I saw a sports massage specialist who fixed everything, showed me how to stretch properly, and (best of all) teased me when I told her about my concerns with age. There are many people far older than me who can do much more than I can do, she told me. Those negative comments closed me off. Her knowledgeable explanation opened me up again.

The same is true of the upcoming recession. I’ve been through a few of these in my career. They aren’t fun. But they aren’t impossible either. When you close yourself off with statements like “it’s going to be impossible to get a new job because no one will be hiring”… then you’ll stop trying. It doesn’t help you at all. It’s the same as saying “this bug can’t be fixed” or “I’m too old”. The future belongs to those who are open.

Notice when you are closed. Notice when cynicism sets in.

Be open.

The Confidence Ladder

February 1, 2021 by wroolie Leave a Comment

In Army training, we sometimes visited the confidence course.

The confidence course is like a giant playground of walls to jump over, beams to walk across, ropes to climb and a giant ladder to climb. It’s the kind of thing you always see in a montage of soldiers training in movies.

But to be honest, in the four years I was in the Army, I only visited the confidence course a handful of times. Once or twice in Basic Training and a few times in AIT. I was a linguist, after all, and not infantry. I remember thinking I was probably more scared than the other soldiers in my platoon as we stood getting our briefing of how to attack it. In retrospect, they were probably just as scared as me but didn’t show it. It’s funny how we can see every raw nerve we have but not the nerves of others.

And, yeah, of my 48 years so far, I still think back a lot to the Army days. They were formative. And sometimes, things from the Army just pop into my head in real life.

For example, I always think of the confidence ladder.

Okay, I don’t know if that’s what it’s actually called. I think it might be called “Jacob’s Ladder”. But it is a giant ladder that climbs into the sky. You climb up one end and down the other. The top is the most terrifying part of it.

At the bottom of the ladder, it’s easy. You just climb. If you fall, you fall.

But as you get higher, you have further to fall. Your muscles seize up. Your fear stops you from going higher. I can tell you that I don’t know if I would have been able to get over the top if it weren’t for the shouting drill sergeant at the bottom. If he weren’t there, I’d probably congratulate myself on how high I’d climbed and not gone any further. After all, I was going to be a linguist— not a Ranger! But I did get over it. But even as I sit here decades later thinking about it, it still makes my breath shallower and a feeling of dread overcomes me ever so slightly.

So, why do I still think about it? Because it still applies to me every day.

Early progress is easy when there is little to lose. That’s why we tinker and try new things. A new skill, a new app, a new product, a new video. If it fails, all we suffer is a little embarrassment. If it succeeds, though, that’s awesome.

And success leads to momentum. We continue to climb. We get better and better and look back at the initial resistance we had. We see that resistance in others and wonder why they can’t move out of their comfort zone and do the same.

But then, we slow down. And maybe we stop. We got too high on the ladder. The next rung looks too far away. We congratulate ourselves on how high we climbed.

That’s good enough, right?

Deep down, however, we know we should still be climbing. But there is so far to fall now if we slip up.

I wish I could say that I didn’t feel this way.

When my big app started to get very successful, I didn’t want to change it. It had hundreds of thousands of daily users. Why change it? But I should have kept growing it. Logically, I knew I had to keep evolving it and growing it. But, I could lose so much if I messed up. I can kick myself for not doing more when I look back on it now.

For years, I was putting out content every day on my YouTube channel. When the subscriber count was low, it was easy. Not many were watching. But as it grew, I became more cautious. I started thinking about delivering only what people wanted rather than what I wanted to give them. And my daily postings are now at once or twice a week. I need to work on this. It bothers me that I’ve froze.

It’s that ladder. The higher you get the safer you get.

There is a reason we equate youth with enthusiasm. I used to think it had to do with energy. And maybe it does. But I think it also has a lot to do with that ladder. When we are young, we have little to lose. And failure is easily forgiven. When we get older, with family and colleagues who depend on us, we get safe.

Preferring to Be Alone

March 18, 2018 by wroolie Leave a Comment

I’m sitting at the LaLuz Beach Resort in the Philippines by myself. For the past few days, my team and I have been hanging out here and having a good time and also discussing the future of the company. They left yesterday and I stayed another day.

I’m by myself and I’m fine with it.

In fact, I spend a lot of time by myself. One of my pleasures as a kid was going to to the movies by myself. Others thought it was sad, but I liked being able to walk from the cinema with thoughts of the movie swimming in my head and not filled with chatter or the opinions of others. I frequently like to be alone.

As a software developer, I spend a lot of time in pensive thought. This ability to embrace ‘aloneness’ and quiet is what has helped me learn everything I need to learn and tinker with all the code I want. I wonder if this is a trait of software developers. We’re often introverted and pensive.

This wasn’t easy as a kid though. Every parent-teacher meeting was like a “greatest hits” album and never changed regardless of which year it was or which teacher was saying it— “Eric is a good kid, but needs to apply himself and come out of his shell”. They always talked about my shell. I never understood why it wasn’t enough that I just learn what they were teaching. I had to perform too?

I’ve always had very few close friends. And I’m terrible about keeping in touch when I move on to new places or new jobs. My kids sometimes ask me “Dad, how come you don’t have any friends?” I just smile and say “I don’t need friends, I have you.” I’m close with family members and work colleagues where we share the same interests. And, there are a few who work their way in, but I’m not easy to be friends with. It’s probably one of my big failings.

I am probably the worst person in the world at making small-talk.

A few years ago, I read the book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. That was the first time in my life where I felt like I might be normal. It sounds stupid, but I always thought there was something wrong with me. When we think of quiet recluses with few friends, we hear about mass murders and the Unabomber. The book is very funny. She talks about how it’s okay to cross the street to avoid talking to someone you know just because you don’t feel like talking. She talked about a lot of things I had been feeling my whole life.

I’m trying to be more outgoing. I’ve had jobs that required me to talk to people in large groups. For example, I worked as a narrator at Sea World of Texas and gave narrations on dolphins, penguins, etc over a microphone. That helped. I’m doing the daily Youtube videos now, where I am actually trying to open up a little and be honest about my own thoughts (even if they might expose vulnerabilities). I’m trying…

My big fear when starting Overpass was not whether or not it could be done. I know it can. My big fear was (and still is) that I am not the guy to do it. Maybe if I was outgoing and super-confident, I could do it. I can’t stand the arrogant “entrepreneurs” who seem to know very little but talk a lot— but I still envy them to some degree. I don’t want to become them. I want to be me and I want to see if I can make this work.

But…today… I’m just going to sit here by myself.