Sometimes you need to stand still

A few weeks ago, I quite terribly hurt one of my toes while clipping its nail. It took some time to heal, but due to the nature of its current state, it will take some more time to fully recover. But now it doesn't hurt anymore at least, and I can do anything I want.

However a few days ago, when it still hurt a bit, I was going to spend the day with a friend. I had to walk for 20 minutes to the train station, early in the morning, so I was in a bit of a hurry. I put my shoe on too fast and hurt the toe again. I could hardly walk! I really didn't want to miss my train, so I just went as fast as possible, which wasn't nearly fast enough. I feared for the worst.

Then it happened. I neared a crossing where I had to wait a few seconds for some bicycles. When I started walking again, I noticed the pain was gone. Or at least, most of it. I quickly walked on to the station and arrived there well in time. So my lesson for the day was, sometimes you need to stand still in order to move forward.

Of course everybody knows you have to let your body rest after an injury, but it is my opinion this also goes for everything else. Nowadays people (and corporations) think to stand still is to move backwards, but if you keep going forward all the time, even if you face problems, chances are in the long run you only get more problems.

This week, there are two situations where I told people to take their time, slow down if necessary, because in my opinion that would only solve issues faster.

The first situation was at Oyster Bay, where due to a simple error, a large part of the build disappeared. The owner Morris Vig doesn't have the time to fix this right away (and it's a lot of work too), so I told him to take his time. It's no use if he'd just throw everything from his Lost & Found folder back onto the land. Yes, then it's be fixed fast, but it's not getting any prettier.

The second situation is the scheduled maintenance on the Second Life servers. While I write this, the grid is closed. I commented on the blog I'd rather have to wait a bit longer than to jump right back inworld and find I can't rez, teleport, pay...

There sure are much more people having problems at the time, to them I'd like to say the exact same thing. Take your time sorting everything out. You can try to move on and partially ignore your problems, that won't get you anywhere in the long run. Sometimes you need to stand still in order to move forward.