Thought
There is a big difference between something working and something understood. This week reminded me how often I blur the two.
What happened
I had systems that were technically working - pfSense, Cloudflare Tunnel, SSH access - but I did not fully understand why they were working, or under what conditions they would stop. When something broke, the fix was not about tweaking settings blindly. It was about identifying the assumptions I had made without realizing it.
What changed
Once I slowed down and treated the problem like infrastructure instead of just a bug, the solution became clearer. The firewall was not broken. The system was behaving exactly as designed, just not as I had assumed.
Why it matters
Understanding turns fixes into knowledge. Working systems are fragile if you do not know why they work. Documenting the reasoning, not just the final fix, is how I avoid relearning the same lesson later.
This blog exists to capture that gap.