Sometimes life's lessons are vague and hard to see, but last night I got a lesson that was crystal clear. Be patient! Everyone says that patience is a virtue - it's become a platitude, something that's printed on fortune cookies. But I feel that this message is so important, especially for New Yorkers. Life is so rush, rush rush and we want what we want and we want it now. But last night really made me step back and think again.
I had connected my iPhone to my computer so I could play the music through our wireless speakers at work. It was a little after 6:00 and I was ready to leave, but it was taking so long to sync that I just pulled the plug. I noticed as I was getting on the elevator that my library was empty. It was weird; I could cycle through my music by clicking "now playing" but couldn't see any of the music that was in my library. I figured that I'd just sync it when I got home and that'd fix the problem. If I had just been patient and waited for it to finish, this wouldn't have happened. I could chalk that one up a minor inconvenience. I hadn't learned anything yet.
I got home and turned on my laptop to sync up my iPhone. I was prompted to update to the latest version of iTunes so I did that while syncing. It didn't work the first time - I assumed because I was updating iTunes. So I Ctrl-Al-Deleted iTunes so I could stop the installation. This, which I should have known, would mess up all the files in the iTunes folders. Great! Now I had to re-install iTunes. I just knew that all my songs would be gone and I'd have to repopulate my library. All my play counts, play lists, everything be gone.
Luckily, the library was still there. Everything was just how I left it. I reconnected my iPhone and everything synced properly. The only last effect was that I got to the gym about an hour later than I wanted. If I had just taken an extra 10 seconds to finish syncing at work, the whole situation could have been avoided. And if I had just taken an extra 10 minutes to install the new version of iTunes, even more time could have been saved. It was like a double whammy! It really made me sit and think. A little patience goes a long way.
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