I'm frustrated.

Over the last few weeks, I've been working on improving how ZenSearch parses jobs to determine if they're remote, hybrid, or on site. I've gotten nowhere.

Each day, I run a new script or deploy a new piece of code to address and fix the mismatches we sometimes get. At least that's what it's supposed to do. But after each new job ingestion, when I'm expecting to see changes to the job posts, I instead see the same errors.

I've reworked my approach, multiple times. I've wrangled Claude. I've crossed my fingers as I take more and more chances. Every time, I think, "this time I've finally solved the problem," only to be disappointed.

With each attempt, and each failure, my frustration builds. I wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep because my mind is swirling. It should be easy to fix, so why isn't it?

Sound familiar?

This weekend, my frustration boiled over to something ridiculous— strawberry brownies.

I'd decided that's what I wanted to bring to my neighborhood's annual block party. It was something I'd never made before. I bought the ingredients, did the prep, and baked them.

They were bright pink and completely disgusting. I thought maybe I could save them with the strawberry glaze, but that made it worse, pooling in the middle, not hardening.

They were inedible.

With tears in my eyes, I tossed them in the compost bin. I was crying, over brownies.

Of course, it wasn't the brownies. They were just the scapegoat. It was the other stuff.

When we've been working on something for a while and it isn't successful, it's easy (and human) to get down on ourselves, to let it spill over. Obviously, I'm guilty of that.

My frustration is legitimate, but my reaction to it is a choice. I can be angry, or I can choose to see it a different way.

Instead of focusing on how many solutions haven't worked, I can consider all the approaches I've tried and discarded.

Instead of obsessing over every disappointment, I can appreciate how much I'm learning.

Instead of becoming angry when I frantically check after each job ingestion, I can celebrate that my changes haven't broken anything. (A true concern)

So later on, when I attempt today's fix (and probably tomorrow's and the next day's...), I'll choose to let the frustration go and know that, however slowly, I'm getting closer to success.

And in case you're wondering, I made regular brownies from a box mix and everyone loved them. I'm sure there's a lesson there too.

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