The Awesome Power of Fixing the Damn Microwave
A little bit of mindfulness goes a long way to maintaining your creativity in a world of setbacks and distractions.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn in July of 2022. I’m reposting it here as part of moving my writing to my own platform…
Gather round dear readers as I spin you a tale of rage and empowerment on a Thursday morning…
It’s 7:30am and I’m on the floor in the living room doing my morning stretches. Sparkly bright sunshine flows in through the faceted windows painting rainbow hued shapes on me and the floor. The heat of the summer has not yet arrived in Central Oregon, and as I shift slowly to my next pose, cool air and Birdsong from the open patio doors floats gently into the room. My cat Bootsy Collins joins me in this ritual, silently judging my form.
I always try to begin my day with quiet. No television, no radio, no podcasts. Finding calm and focus among all of the interruptions and distractions of the modern world is not easy and beginning my day in silence helps me transition into my studio where I’m slowly rebuilding my 3D motion design skills. My family knows this time is important to me, so they normally give me my space.
Uh oh… here it comes…
You called it Snarky Voice in My Head… My wife walks into the room and without preamble says… “The microwave is broken.” My morning focus time has been officially shattered.
I quit my swanky corporate job about 6 weeks ago to “build a creative life” for myself. Even though I budgeted to take a year off, I’m essentially unemployed right now. We’ve got plenty of money in the bank, but I’m acutely sensitive to unexpected expenditures. A broken microwave sounds suspiciously like an expenditure I did not expect, and I can feel my teeth start grinding together. Time to employ some mindfulness techniques I’ve been studying and practicing.
Wait… You mean you didn’t just start shouting F-bombs?
The Rob of just a few months ago would have started there and quickly devolved to a proper tantrum. I was already on the floor, right? Why not start thrashing around like a two-year-old? Instead, my therapist popped into my head with that look she always has when I didn’t do the thing she told me I was supposed to be doing for the 10th time. So, this time I did it… Pause… Deep breath… Examine your thoughts.
This is not an emergency. Worst case scenario, you don’t have a microwave. Your Uncle Bill has lived without a microwave on purpose for decades. Your entire ancestral line lived without a microwave. From an amoeba swimming in the ocean, to a lungfish stepping out of the water, to a protohuman hunting and gathering, to the African slave hauled across the ocean to work in America, right up to the moment my father bought our first microwave in 1979… #notanemergency
Wow, look at you all mature and shit… I’m proud of you!
It has taken 56 years but I’m finally kinda sorta every now and then getting a handle on my emotions. Hoisting myself off the floor, I look at the microwave and punch some buttons. Sure enough… not working. Next question is “Why?” The latch mechanism is broken, and the door won't lock shut so the thingy that produces the deadly microwaves won’t activate. That’s a good thing in this instance.
A quick google search of “Samsung microwave door latch” confirms that I’m not the first person to experience this. I found a video on YouTube with 377,000 views. The guy who created it did an amazing job explaining the problem and exactly how to fix it without having to call a repair person or order a new part. The whole process took about 15 minutes and cost me no money at all.
A cheap fix? You should be happy right?
You’d think so, but as I pulled off the inside door panel with a putty knife, I found exactly the situation described in the video. Now that I can hold the part in my hand, I can feel exactly how poorly it was made. The product designers and engineers at #Samsung used the lowest quality plastic they could possibly get away with to make a critical component that would have to endure thousands of activations over the life of the product. Not only that, but it was also designed in a way that almost guaranteed it would fail long before the core components of the microwave would.
Remember above when I had control over my emotions… not anymore. I bought this microwave just a couple of years ago. The video I found to fix the problem was made EIGHT YEARS AGO!! Hundreds of thousands of Samsung microwave owners have had this exact problem and it has never been corrected?? WTF Samsung… you saved a few cents per unit, but you passed that cost downstream to your customers!!???
Ohhhhh snap!! There’s the Rob I know so well!!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr… In Samsung’s defense, they’re not the only company to do silly crap like that. Automakers still sell cars with CD players and charge the buyer extra for them. Cable companies blackout key local sports events on TV because lawyers I guess? Apple, the company touted as the pinnacle of product design, has inflicted the lightning cable on the world so they could sell proprietary overpriced cables instead of adopting an industry standard. These aren’t even examples of “deadly misconduct”. They’re just corporations trying to increase their margin without thinking about the effects on their customers or the impact on the world they operate in.
Uhhhhh So this is a rant against Capitalism? I thought it was a tale of rage and empowerment?
Oh right… deep breaths… I got so wrapped up in the rage, I almost forgot about the empowering impact that the microwave had on my day. From all the ranting above, you’d think my morning had been ruined, but strangely, the opposite happened.
The 3D animation project I’m working on isn’t quite ready to share. It’s getting close, but it has been a continuous series of technical challenges and much slower progress than I would have hoped. Wonky dynamic particle simulations and backtracking on the approach to work around limitations in the software have put me off my original schedule and I’d started to get discouraged about ever having anything to show for my work.
But, the awesome power of fixing the damn microwave myself was so gratifying and such a huge relief that I felt like I could do anything! I couldn’t wait to get into my studio and fell deep into Cinema 4D. That empowering energy helped me bust through a technical barrier and make some real progress. The project is not done but it is A LOT closer to being ready for sharing.
Adversity happens to us all and our reaction to it defines the quality of our daily experience. A little bit of mindfulness can go a long way towards smoothing out the bumps of being a human in a modern world that sometimes seems purpose built to create anxiety and strife.
I’d love to hear about a challenge you’ve faced, no matter how small… How did you respond? How did you learn from it? Let us know in the comments!
Oh... Since you've made it this far, here's the proof that I'm not strong enough to rip out my own microwave in a fit of rage, no matter how much I want to...
