I stumbled out of bed,
I got ready for the struggle.
I smoked a cigarette
And I tightened up my gut.
I said this can’t be me-
Must be my double.

And I can’t forget, I can’t forget.
I can’t forget, but I don’t remember what.

Monday

Last week, I was waiting for a day when nothing went right, seems like I didn’t have to hang around for too long. Woke about 7am from a full night’s sleep feeling groggy. I don’t remember any nightmares this time, but definitely didn’t feel rested. Made my first mistake of the day waking Sleeper Jr. – having let him stay up late, he really wasn’t ready to get up and I should have left him be rather than ask him to come and get breakfast. As a result he was needy and upset for most of the morning.

Second mistake was, while frustrated at someone who wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways in a conference call about something I’d delivered, raising my voice to the point of almost shouting to try to get my point across. Sincere apologies were forthcoming immediately, both to the subject of my frustration and my boss for making the rest of the team look bad, but it put my own mood into an intense downer for the rest of the day, being incredibly angry with myself.

I didn’t calm down over lunch; J suggested I go for a walk to clear my head, so I stomped around the neighbourhood for a half hour. Not sure it helped all that much if I’m honest, other than reminding me that my winter jacket is way too warm for the weather now. Also unhelpful for my mood was the rumour finding its way back to me that I’d been involved in a full-on, three way, shouting match. Nope.

Having prepared for a bunch of calls over the afternoon, it turned out that I can’t even read a calendar properly and the vast majority were tomorrow, which I only realised after pinging the organiser of one of them. Argh. Eventually stopped work about 5:30 after discussing the plan of attack for tonight’s go-live and getting some minor auditability improvements done to a bunch of our infrastructure stacks, my brain feeling like it was melting. Watched the daily government briefing and correctly surmised that the prime minister was a lot more ill than anyone was willing to say out loud.

Spent most of the evening yawning, so headed to bed early hoping for some decent rest, but didn’t manage to sleep until much later. Early start in the morning, supporting the go-live process that others were going to start at midnight.

Tuesday

In some ways a better day, in others, not so much. Got up at 6:45, at my desk for 7 to take over from my boss who’d been working the midnight to 7 shift for the big rollout. Joined the war room call, and sat and kept an eye on various metrics and logs. Breakfast was at my desk, though shortly afterwards I dropped from the call leaving one of my team to field any questions, with instruction to grab me if anything needed my attention. Which it did at 11:50, just as I was about to take lunch. Ninety minutes later, I’d missed lunch with the family, eating it at my desk, and conclusively proved this was a problem somewhere outside of our control.

Eventually stopped working at about 5, after nearly 10 hours of sitting in the same place, set my out of office and shut off the laptop. I might mot be allowed to go anywhere but I’m still going to take my booked time off. I want to spend a few days not caring about work. Had a pleasant dinner and got the kids into bed remarkably early, giving me plenty of time to talk to J before a FaceTime beers session into the evening. We finished, not so many beers down as last time, and not quite so late as last time, but still plenty late enough. I’m ready for a rest.

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