Mistakes, we all have made them and what’s important about them is the lessons we learn from them which like the ones from Ryan’s story , but it also struck a chord because it reminded of a similar experience I went through when I decided to go for walk on a beach when I was a kid.

Then beach turned into a small hill, and the walk into a hike.

The hill turned into a cliff, and the hike into exploration.

And then there was no more trail.

I found myself trying to climb down the cliff into the rocks near where the waves broke to see how far I could get.

I knew that on the other end of the cliff there was another beach and I would be safe then, but during the ordeal I asked myself “why?” many times: when I was half way down the cliff and almost fell, when I felt tired and didn’t know how much longer I would have to walk between the rock wall and the water, when the waves broke against the rocks right beside me…

And then, similar to what happened to Ryan, I saw the end of the cliff. On that moment the ordeal had become and adventure and the cliff was mine, and wasn’t that hard after all. And of course I only told my friends that side of the story: the tale was always told as a tale of courage and adventure :)

I even found the equivalent to about 10 bucks between the rocks, I was a millionaire :)

I did get in trouble for disappearing for so long, but oh well.

It’s fun to look at things from a different perspective, and Ryan’s tale helped me do just that. Go try, fail and learn:

Would be coders. Please listen to me. DO THINGS THE WRONG WAY Fuck them up. Badly. 2 months from now you should look back at the code you’re writing today and laugh at it. If you don’t, you’re not being ambitious enough, and you’re being a wuss that shuttles himself up to organ donor.