My Thoughts on… Well, You Know
People hear terms thrown around, maybe see stuff in movies or whatever, and think it’s all one-size-fits-all, or that there’s some secret manual everyone else got. But that’s rarely how real life, or real connection, works. It’s more nuanced than that, a whole spectrum if you catch my drift.
It’s kinda like learning a new skill, honestly. Sounds weird, maybe, but hear me out. I remember when my partner and I decided we were gonna learn to make proper sourdough bread from scratch. Not the packet mix, the real deal – starter, long fermentation, the whole nine yards. We thought, “How hard can it be? Flour, water, salt.” Oh, were we in for a ride.
- First attempt? A brick. Seriously, could’ve used it as a doorstop. We just stared at it.
- Second try? A bit better, more of a dense pancake, but still, you wouldn’t proudly serve it. We almost gave up.
- We then properly started digging in: watched a ton of videos, scrolled through forums, even bought a book. We were arguing about hydration levels and folding techniques – it got pretty intense for a while there.
We quickly realized there wasn’t just “making bread.” That was the first big lesson. There were so many variables we hadn’t even considered: the temperature of the water, the exact humidity in our kitchen that day, how gently or firmly you folded the dough, how long you actually let it rest between steps. Each “type” of outcome, each stage of the process, seemed to need a different touch, a different approach. It wasn’t about just blindly going through a set of motions we’d read somewhere; it was about really paying attention, communicating with each other like, “Hey, does this feel too sticky to you?” or “Are you sure you fed the starter this morning?!”, and being totally willing to experiment and, yeah, mess up quite a few more times.
And here’s the kicker, the thing that really stuck with me: what worked perfectly for one batch, making a beautiful, tangy loaf, didn’t always give the same results for the next. We had to learn to adapt, to be flexible. Some days the dough was super active and bubbly, other days it was sluggish and needed more coaxing. You genuinely had to feel it out, develop an intuition for it. And you know, after a whole lot of trial and error, we eventually got pretty good. Not because we stumbled upon some magic, secret formula, but because we really committed to learning the process, to listening to each other’s input (even when we disagreed), and to understanding the dough itself. We learned there were different approaches, different “feels,” different ways to get to a good place, and what mattered most was finding what worked for us, in that particular moment, with that particular batch.
So, when I hear folks start talking about, well, other kinds of skills that involve, let’s say, close collaboration, mutual understanding, and trying to achieve a really satisfying outcome for everyone involved… I just think back to that sourdough journey. It’s not always about some grand, pre-defined set of rigid instructions or expecting one thing to be like another. More often than not, it’s about the learning, the trying things out, the constant communicating, and truly understanding that there’s a whole beautiful range of ways to get there. And honestly, sometimes, the “getting there,” the exploring of all that variety, is way more interesting and rewarding than just aiming for one specific thing you saw in a manual somewhere. You just gotta be open to the process, you know? Not just fixated on a single, narrow definition of success.
