What Stands in the Way
iPhone photo taken with the wonderful XP4N app
It's a quirk of English law that house sales are not binding until very late in the process, so buyers and sellers can pull out of a sale almost until the last minute.
One day, back in 2016, we were about to exchange contracts on a house sale, and on that morning, the sellers pulled out. We had already sold our house, and we had hired a holiday home for ten days while we waited for the new sale to go through.
Well, that was no longer happening.
All our belongings were in storage, and our kids were due to start school in a new town, eighty miles from London.
We had nowhere to live.
We nearly lost our minds with the stress of it all. We had to scramble to find short-term rentals that we could afford, and we hopped from one to another for the next few months.
My computer was in storage, along with almost everything else we owned, so I couldn't work or create tutorials. I bought a laptop as a stopgap and did my best to work in whatever temporary home we were currently in.
It took us eight months to finally buy another house - eight months in temporary housing and without most of our possessions.
Why am I telling you this? Because the story has a happy ending.
We ended up in a much better place in the end, and we lucked out and found a wonderful home. A much better home than the original one that fell through. And so, despite all the pain and stress, we are overjoyed that things turned out the way they did.
Other people's lives always seem ordered and neat. Not ours.
In our family, we always just about muddle through, somehow. It's messy and chaotic, but by hook or by crook, we make it
The obstacle is the path is a Zen saying, similar to the quote by Stoic Philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
I don't know about you, but this certainly aligns with my experience.
Life is messy, and outside events often muddle up our best-laid plans. Or to pull another quote from a Stoic genius, John Lennon in this case, Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
So, on a much smaller scale, this was how I felt when I read the email from Foundry announcing the end of Modo. Compared to some disasters in life it wasn't so big, but it was nonetheless very disappointing.
But with every small disaster comes opportunity.
In this case, the opportunity was to give up on a neglected and slowly dying app, and jump over to a new more vibrant and exciting one.
And just like every other time before, I wouldn't have jumped if circumstances hadn't pushed me first. I could have ploughed on with Modo for years, even while it was wilting under Foundry's lack of care.
And just like every time before, I'm glad that things turned out the way they did. Why? Because I'm excited to learn something new and invest my time in an app that I know has a bright future.
And you are all welcome to join me. Wherever you are on your Blender journey, I can help you.