The Day
Today started as usual. I came in around 9:20. With few pure IT tasks until the afternoon, I spent most of the morning and early afternoon on website prep. I was using Anti-Gravity to help me with the blog post features, migrating the stack from plain GitHub Pages to a fuller setup — adding a database via Supabase, deploying both backend and frontend on Vercel, and linking my custom domain.
I worked on that until around 3 PM, handling some administration work in between.
Then the network went down.
What Happened
My engineering / IT head messaged me on WhatsApp saying there was an issue with the network. Shortly after, I started seeing the Wi-Fi going down.
I felt the panic rise. Not a full panic attack, but that tight, urgent feeling. I went straight to the server room.
Inside I found a switch, two servers (one running the infrastructure and one for backup), a domain controller, and a couple of strange devices with three inlets for plugs.
The IT head stayed on WhatsApp and the phone, giving me instructions. I followed them. But what I didn’t like about myself in that moment was the panicked tone in my voice, and the fact that I was mostly waiting for him to tell me what to do instead of actively thinking and troubleshooting on my own.
We eventually figured out the root cause: the landline simply hadn’t been paid. Once the finance team settled the bill, the connections came back live again. The whole troubleshooting process stretched from Dhuhr until Asr.
Reflections & Lessons
A few things stood out for me today:
-
Humility is not stagnation.
I’m careful not to let “being humble” backfire. Being humble doesn’t mean staying quiet, accepting less, or stopping yourself from looking for something better. I keep thinking of Abdul Ghafoor Al-Buraie from Lan A’eesh Fe Gelbab Aby — the way he stayed humble while working under Al Hajj Sardina, yet never stopped aiming higher and building more. -
Simple problems still need ownership.
The network issue was not technical complexity. It was a missed payment. These kinds of problems are easy to dismiss as “not my department,” but they still cost time and disrupt the day. I want to get better at noticing and flagging these upstream issues earlier, even when they’re outside my direct scope. -
Track the time.
I didn’t record the exact time the outage started or the exact time service was fully restored. That’s a gap. Going forward, I need to log start and end times for every outage. Without those numbers, it’s hard to measure impact, improve response, or show progress. -
Stay calm and think for yourself.
I didn’t like the panicked tone in my speech or the way I defaulted to just waiting for instructions. Next time an outage happens, I need to catch that reaction early, stay calmer, and start running my own troubleshooting steps instead of only following someone else’s lead. -
Coordination still has room to improve.
Checking the room, talking to the right people, waiting for finance — all of it worked, but it took longer than it needed to. Clearer ownership and faster communication between teams is something I can push for (and practice myself) next time.
The Takeaway
Stay humble.
Stay useful.
Measure what matters.
Stay calm when things break.
Think for yourself under pressure.
And keep looking for the next improvement — in the systems around you, and in yourself.