Trying to be ‘The Big Easy’ myself
So, the other day, I was just scrolling through some sports news, you know, killing time. Saw a mention of that golfer, Ernie Els. They always call him ‘The Big Easy’. It just stuck in my head for a bit. The Big Easy. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Smooth. Effortless. Like things just glide along for him.
It got me thinking because, man, things were not feeling easy for me right then. I was wrestling with this side project, trying to get this old piece of software talking to a new system. It felt like forcing two stubborn mules to shake hands. Everything was clunky, awkward, just plain hard. Lots of late nights, hitting dead ends, feeling like I was wading through mud.
Then that nickname popped back into my head. ‘The Big Easy’. Okay, I’m no pro golfer, not even close. But the idea… what if I stopped forcing it? What if I tried to make the process feel a bit easier, smoother? Not necessarily simpler, but less like a fight.
So, here’s what I did:
- First, I just stopped. Stepped away from the keyboard for a whole evening. Didn’t think about the project at all. Just cleared my head.
- Next day, instead of jumping right back into the messy code I had, I grabbed a notebook. A real paper one. Started sketching out the flow, how the data should move ideally. Not worrying about the existing limitations yet, just the clean path.
- Looked at my drawing. Okay, this part here, this connection point, that’s where it always felt jammed up. Why? Because I was trying to make the old system do something it really wasn’t built for.
- So, I thought about Ernie again. Easy swing, right? Maybe I needed an easier swing here. Instead of forcing the connection directly, could I build a small, simple bridge? A little helper piece of code that sits in the middle, translates things gently between the old mule and the new one?
- It meant a bit more upfront work, building this ‘translator’. Wasn’t the absolute direct path I first tried to bash through. But the idea was to make the actual data flow smooth. Like Els’ swing, maybe?
- Spent a couple of days building that little bridge. Kept it super simple. Focused on just one job: translate smoothly.
And you know what? It actually worked. Once that little bridging piece was in place, the data started moving without all the errors and crashes. It wasn’t ‘easy’ like flipping a switch, still took effort. But it felt less like fighting the systems and more like guiding them. The whole process just felt less… gritty. Smoother.
Funny how a golfer’s nickname rattling around in my head ended up helping me fix a stubborn tech problem. Just needed to stop wrestling and find a smoother path. Find my own version of ‘The Big Easy’, I guess. Still lots to do on the project, but it doesn’t feel like wading through mud anymore.
