Those first few months are blurry in my memory. Because of my context, I thought at the time that it was because I wasn’t a good engineer. Now, I understand that I was in a learning phase. I recognize these phases better now. It was the same feeling as when I had started doing hardware. Not really understanding everything. Everything seemed to blurry precisely because my brain was trying to focus on everything that was new, it was trying to adjust the lenses of understanding and knowledge to have a sharp picture.

It was an in-between moment. The lab had ended for me. Storage team was taking shape but not completely in motion yet. Kind of the buffer zone between empty and full of action.

The office, la maison, was a great place to be in this state for me. The vastness of it and the choice of where to go and work was liberating. I could change places depending on if I wanted to be alone or near people. If I wanted to be slouched on a couch or I wanted a more focused chair and second screen.

The one thing it did was bring me back to Epitech, the university I had gone to. You could find similar traits. The many rooms where you could work, the building open 24/7 where I could drop in any day any time. The learning and focused atmosphere, at least for me, made it an exceptional place to work.

It was really cool even though I could no longer drink the tea from my teapot. It was forbidden to have any food or liquids any other place than the cafeteria. My sugar treats and tea mixes had to disappear back to my personal home.

I only very recently, at the time of writing, understood how to appreciate that discovery phase. I used to think of it as wasted time. Trying to push forward in that haze, pushing forward to get more action, have the action be quicker. Basically forcing myself through the layers of time. Forcing myself through the fabric had the consequence of me not enjoying that period at all. It cost me the happiness of discovering new things. I could not be happy because I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t accomplishing enough and quickly enough. Time was my enemy, at least, back then.

I was denying myself of one of the things I enjoyed the most. Learning and discovering.

When I look back, when I look at the timeline, when I look at what we accomplished and the speed of which we did it, I understand that my impressions at the time were completely out of touch.

The pivot was only a single digit of weeks back, yet we were already pulling everything together. We were already fairly advanced. Object storage was in focus.

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(1) Photos available here by Emmanuel Caillé​

(2) Photos by the launch event photographer - if you know who it was please tell me

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If you have missed it, you can read the previous episode here​

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To pair with :

• Tête brulées - Lunatic
• Dr. Seuss and Co. Go to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of America's Leading Comic Artists by André Schiffrin