[Diver, Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, Boston; 8/25/12]
Last Saturday we took the T over to the waterfront once again, this time to watch some of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, which had divers executing perfect acrobatics between the cantilevered roof of the Instititute of Contemporary Art (ICA) 80 feet down into Boston Harbor. The area was packed with people, so we couldn't get very close, but from two different vantage points we were able to see the divers launch themselves from the roof, twist, tuck, pike and then vanish just before entry into the water. A helpful big screen TV provided scenes of actual splash downs. D and spent much of the time trying to capture the dives with our digital cameras. My "burst" setting captured a number of fun stop-action sequences that are a bit grainy with speed and distance, but at some point I'll try to stitch together.
[View from Commonwealth Pier to the ICA]
[Braving the platform to sing the national anthem]
It was actually a beautiful day, sunnier than it appears in the above photos, with a heat-sparing light cloud cover.
It was a bit of an upsetting week as I was blindsided by a call from a rather difficult client on Wednesday. But the fault was all mine, a rather egregious, embarrassing mistake on some copy I'd provided to them awhile back, a result of sloppy thinking and trying to do things too quickly. I spent the evening diligently rechecking all my work and sent back fixes that night. I've not heard one word back from them, which is not unusual for this client. I have to assume that remedied the immediate issue. But it shook me up, imagining my reputation and career taking a dive, and not a nicely executed one at all but rather an ungainly flop ending in a painful, conspicuous splat. I did realize that this attitude wasn't going to help and I did my best to focus for the next couple of days on careful work for my main client these days, who are far looser in their needs, in no small part I'm sure because their audience is internal. Nevertheless, I know that a large measure of my service to them has been to wrestle their content into order and save them from their own disorganization. So I've tried to remind myself of all the good work I've done, to try to pile it up on the scale against the small but weighty glaring error on the other side. And know that while I'll never be perfect I can at least avoid making a similar mistake in the future.
[Tightrope walkers over Fort Point Channel, near the Boston Children's Museum]
