Consider a jazz band you’ve heard or seen live, or really any type of music where improvisation plays an important role. Great bands work together effortlessly, and when things go sideways or “wrong notes” are played, they quickly adapt to the changing conditions in order to keep the music going. This emergent complex system manifests itself in the awesome jams you hear.

Getting around cognitive biases (like “hindsight is 20/20” or a confirmation you expect) is akin to Listening Deeply. I don’t mean paying more attention gives better insight. I mean what matters is the entirety of your sonic awareness.

Cicada, cricket, grasshopper, frog. However that particular indeterminate carpet of sound occurs, it is a permanent feature of the American South. I grew up in this soup, so hearing this familiar symphony again after nearly two decades of being away felt surreal and magical.

Plenty of people who work in technology are musicians. Plenty of humans are musicians, and all of us are listening, even those who cannot hear. In my travels through datacenters and software, I have come across musicians like myself who have not only done double-duty with their computer science and creative lives but also relate and interweave them. If they’re like me, they cannot break them apart. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of us. We all have different stories, came into the worlds…

My job in ops has always been to keep things running. I never considered myself “working in software”, but have recently begun embracing the fact that I do. What I accomplish as an operations and infrastructure engineer is part of the system, it isn’t dislocated from its composition.