To me this is just another version of how we treat time in general-we shove things into the back of the pantry or the corner of our brain and hope they'll stay preserved forever. But even sealed jars show wear and tear, same as how old photos fade or favorite shirts get holes. If something's been sitting untouched for years, it's probably turned into something totally different than what you put in there, whether it's pickled beets or an old friendship.

Try neon orange like iris said, that color really does jump off the page. It got me thinking about how lots of small everyday problems are just about visibility - like how I never used to find my keys until I put a bright orange keychain on them, or how I kept forgetting to take my meds until I put the bottle on my coffee mug every night. The trick is making important stuff physically pop out from everything else around it. Once you get that idea, you start seeing a hundred other places to apply it.

Read something online about this exact thing the other day. A guy on a maker forum spent three days calibrating his extruder before realizing his filament spool was just rubbing against the edge of the table. It's always the dumbest stuff that eats up all the time. My tablet pen kept losing pressure sensitivity for weeks, replaced the nib twice and cleaned the port before noticing the cable had a tiny kink near the plug end. You ever feel like the universe just wants you to question your own sanity over a loose screw or a bent wire?

Did you track what KIND of rejections you got? Like were most after the interview or after the portfolio review? I ask because I kept a similar spreadsheet for my job search in LA and noticed a pattern. Out of 75 rejections, maybe 60 were form emails after submitting my portfolio, but the other 15 were after second round interviews where they said they "went with someone who had more experience." That actually helped me figure out I needed to customize my portfolio more for each job, not just send the same link everywhere.

Back in 2016 I was working on an older 737 and had a digital torque wrench fail mid job, so I swore them off for years. Then I borrowed a friends CDI digital to set some control cables and the repeatability was way better than my beam style could ever do. I still keep a click type in my box for quick jobs where I know the feel, but if its something critical like a flight control actuator I will grab the digital every time now. The data logging feature is actually useful when you need to prove out a torque value later, not just a gimmick like I thought.