Now, I Know
- Alice Ranker
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Everything was going well, it was slow going, but I was making decent progress. It’s the time of year when I put the finishing touches on the writing, layout, and design for the next edition of the Grace Filled Life Designer.
I’m using a new program this year. Sidenote, don’t wait until you have a deadline to learn a new program. However, that’s exactly what I was doing, learning the differences between Affinity and Adobe Indesign.
I had already spent several days looking at the coaching exercises beside the writing to make sure each one created a clear and cohesive thought, choosing the color palette for the monthly calendars and planning hub, and saving my files in the proper formats to bring them into Affinity.
I had just spent two days completing the layout in Affinity, creating the master pages and text styles, etc. Needless to say, I have notes scattered across my desk. I googled. I watched YouTube videos to figure out where to find specific functions. I made lots of notes and hit save periodically.
It wasn’t until Friday, when the program started lagging, that I realized I had been working in it for several days without closing it. So, I hit save, closed the program and restarted my computer. I was in a good place to step away for a few minutes. I took this opportunity to pop over to my mom’s house to help her load some things into her car.
When I returned, I made some lunch, grabbed an Alani and headed back to my office. I typed in my password, watched all the windows open and when Affinity opened, my document wasn’t there.
It’s a new program. It has different functions from the one I’m used to. So I took a deep breath and looked at my files in Affinity.
Nothing.
That’s weird.
Another deep breath. I searched my desktop folder where all my original documents are for this project.
Nothing.
Now I’m nervous.
I searched everywhere I could think of to search, the history, the Mac cache files, my Documents folder.
Nothing. It was gone.
This is the kind of mistake you hope to only make once.
Fortunately I had created a folder on my desktop for all my original files. They were safe. What I lost were the two days of work I had done bringing all those pieces together in Affinity.
Even though I had hit “Save” several times, what I failed to do was “Save As”. My design friends and former professors would probably shake their heads. This mistake cost me a lot of time, and one I imagine many of us have made in one form or another.
I should have known better.
So, after a few tears of frustration I opened Affinity again.
This time, I started with, Create-New-Save As…Design What Matters.
Lesson learned.
I won’t say that I'm not still frustrated about losing two days of work. Extending grace to myself doesn’t magically give me back those hours or move my deadline. I still had to redo the work.
But somewhere between I should have known better and starting over, I realized…
I know better now.
We say, I should have known so easily.
I should have seen that coming.
I should have made a different choice.
I should have asked more questions.
I should have known better.
But should have known asks a past version of ourselves to have information, experience, or understanding that sometimes only comes because of what happened next.
Maybe a better question is, Did I actually know then what I know now? Sometimes the answer may be yes. Sometimes we ignore what we know, and there are lessons in that too. But sometimes the answer is simply, no.
Learning something new comes with a cost we rarely include in our plans. It takes longer. We make mistakes. Ha, I sure did. We search for answers. We have to redo things. These lessons are often painful and we wish there were a simpler way.
Being new can challenge our confidence. But learning often does.
I lost two days of work this week. Two long days.
I learned something I hope I don’t ever forget…”Save As.”
The next time I hear myself say, I should have known better, I hope I remember to stop and ask whether that’s actually true.
Because sometimes, I didn't know better yet.
Now, I know.
Much love,
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