Preventative Action: When Carelessness is Fatal

Funny story — last night, a friend of mine decided that he was sick of his cell phone, a Sony Ericsson w580i. I had my HTC Touch lying around and was interested in getting a Sony Ericsson phone again (I was using a Samsung phone at the time — not feeling the GUI too much), so we traded for the month. We tried fitting his memory card into the HTC Touch slot, but it wouldn’t work — so he handed me the memory card and I put it into the slot. The wrong slot. I had put the memory card into the SIM card slot. Great.

To make a long story short, I tried getting it out with a bent paper clip for two hours, and then gave it over to my moms (I like calling her “moms” instead of “mom” because it sounds less formal — truthfully, I’d prefer “mama deuce” but that’s a bit drastic — yes, a line stolen from Notorious, which was a great movie). Never question moms. She took twenty minutes nudging it out by pushing it side-to-side (the memory card was smaller than the SIM card slot — working with that, she used a clip to navigate from side to side, an undoubtedly tedious process). I love mom.

When she gave me the phone, she looked at me and said something about “preventative action”, and how being careless could lead to a mess.

Why do we Read Manuals?

I usually don’t. But my moms taught me that manuals exist to prevent people from making careless mistakes. When we try assembling furniture without instruction and try relying solely on common sense, we can run into mistakes that result in disassembly and re-assembling from the beginning and having to read instructions anyway.

Thus, reading manuals actually exist for the purpose of taking preventative action — preventing us from running into the careless mistake in the first place. If I was more careful about which slot I’d placed my card in, I wouldn’t have had to waste time, effort, and stress on this object.

I used to aspire towards being carefree and worry-free — but this lesson taught me the importance of worrying and carefulness — and attention detail. A typo here and there, and my credibility can be ruined. If I had attempted to get a job earlier in the summer, I would probably be employed. There are many factors in life that I had left to chance, due to my viewpoint of being carefree, but I think I’ll start to change.

What do you think?

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You’re currently reading “Preventative Action: When Carelessness is Fatal,” an entry on Human Writer

Published:: July 5, 2009 / 11:55 pm

Category:: Development

Tags:: action, careless, carelessness, preventative

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Dear Humanity:

Human Writer blends two aspects of life — humanity and expression, and explores significant issues, techniques, lessons, resources, and aspects of both. I notice that I might’ve used some flowery language, but let me make myself blunt: I will not bend into any pretensity. I am a normal human being — not an elite, intelligent, wealthy scholar, but just another human being. I eat. I drink. I shit. I will make mistakes, but it is with my hope that we can both learn from them.

I write for you, but I also write for myself. I write for you because I need you as a reader — seriously. A lot of celebrities half-heartedly address fans and claim that they were the road to success. See the parallels? However, I will delve deeper: I need you as a reader to support me, but not only that — to encourage me, to reprimand me, to keep me in check. I now possess a voice, and with this voice I demand that you police Human Writer. I am a human. I will make mistakes. And so it’s absolutely essential that I am surrounded by a crowd of loyal, but demanding, readers, to help me develop.

Secondly, I write for you because without you, there is no Human Writer, and there will be no me. Literally. Any blog, website, publication, magazine, or newspaper can tell you that they have running costs. Similarly, with Human Writer, there are running costs. Running my life has costs. I put a lot of time and effort into Human Writer, which is swell, but if nothing is gained out of it then my time and effort are wasted. I would be fruitless, I would have worked for nothing. Should this hapen, then I will not have the financial resources to sustain myself, and will literally cease to function.

Of course, that’s just an extreme, haha.

Finally, I write for you because my goal is to share my knowledge with the human race. Yes, I am a human. So was Plato. Socrates. Kierkegaard. Freud. Fromm. I don’t claim to be a philosopher or legend of any sort, but I like to compare myself to them because they are also humans. We share the same potential. However, without Plato, Socrates, Kierkegaard, Freud, or Fromm, the world would be a very different place. Less advanced. Less sophisticated. Less understanding. Less loving. Less developed. I refuse to believe that there is such a thing as “useless sharing” — all collaboration and knowledge shared is beneficial to both parties, and will be beneficial to the entire human race (imagine what would happen if we’d actually listened to our parents and never made a single mistake that they did, and listened their every instruction?).

I write for myself to document my own life journey. At this point in time, I am seventeen years old. I turn eighteen on September 6. I will admit my lack of experience, but will not let that stop me from getting out my dreams and my advice to you. And if you open your eyes and ears, then you might learn as much from me as I will from you.

Love,

Herbert

Shawanda 7.6.09 / 2am

Funny you mention reading manuals. I bought an Elfa storage unit from The Container Store today and neglected to read the instructions before assembling it. Now, one of the drawers doesn’t have a backstop, and I can’t fix it.

I don’t think the oversight will harm my credibility, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

Herbert 7.6.09 / 2pm

Shawanda: That’s unfortunate to hear — what’s worse is it’s irreparable! Ouch!

In terms of “credibility”, I meant it in the context of writing — typos/grammar errors typically bring down a writer’s credibility because its such a simple and easily correctable error.

Lori | Spiritual Tidbits 7.6.09 / 2pm

I think it’s possible to be care-free and careful at the same time, just avoiding the careless — but attempting to change one’s habits for the better is always admirable. Good luck.

Herbert 7.6.09 / 3pm

Lori: Ah, care-free doesn’t have to be synonymous with careless — an interesting idea. Thanks for commenting!

Human Writer

Preventative Action: When Carelessness is Fatal

Why do we Read Manuals?

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