Dec 6

Hard day today. Struggled.

I think a strong dose of reality kicked in and has made me aware in no uncertain terms that yeah, you're still really fucking ill, and that time is ticking.

So today took the car off to the MOT. Took Athena with me and we walked back home. A 20 minute walk at most.

Athena struggled with it. She was slow. And slightly unsteady. To be honest we don't walk in urban places anymore, only green spaces. She has slowed down a lot. Just in these last couple of weeks. I had already clocked that she was showing her age more and a bit more frail. But today was a stark demonstration of that. I fear her time is short. Which. Is to be expected. Of course. I know. I don't like it. It is how it is. But we shall see. Always there is the ebb and flow. Rise and fall. Where we are in that cycle I do not know.

If Athena struggled. Then so did I. The walk home was relatively ok for me. Got back, got to work.

The release didn't happen. Pushed back again until "next Tuesday". At this point, in my humble opinion, the project has been mishandled. Scope creep has been allowed to get out of hand. Sure it has had its fuckups and missteps, exposing the lack of knowledge or experience in what's at hand. But it has also beyond that just been allowed to spin on indefinitely. This is the hallmark of Andy being bullied around and not wanting to set any kind of boundary. But also, our new PM seems to have not set any boundaries or pushback. Perhaps too new to feel ok to do that. However all round you can see the lack of leadership in there, someone to step in and be the adult and make the calls and set the boundaries. Everyone is just bouncing along turning the whole thing into a nightmare. The impact of never ending jobs on devs - and anyone else in the chain the other side of a client - cannot be underestimated. Psychologically they are crushing. The goal posts forever move away from you. Everything you do is never good enough. And there is no light at the end of the tunnel. One of the key indicators of well being and job satisfaction is a job where you can see the result of your efforts, and that turnaround is fairly quick - preferably same day. This isn't speculation. It's a tested fact. Ask the shrinks.

Beyond how gruelling you're making the environment for devs ( I would take a guess that our new dev is probably hating life at this point ), never ending jobs also raise problems of scale - the bigger they get, the harder and more problematic they become to release, running elevated risks of something fucking up. Problems of budgeting. You never quite pull the trigger on charging for something. Or you have to be very careful about your initial contract ( guess if we are here ), and a lot of arguments can spring up about how much it should cost because the initial estimate is now just garbage. Finally there are all sorts of problems about source control, about being flexible in having other work be released. In clogs up the works, a major obstacle that cannot be moved around.

What should have happened is they should have kept development tight and release this months ago ( and also avoided several self inflicted fuck ups ). Then a series of change requests should have been made over the proceeding few months, updating and altering what was live, each one getting their own estimation and prioritisation in the workqueue. You know. Normal software release stuff. This project on the other hand is the opposite of that. It exposes a lack of experience or knowledge about what the fuck you should be doing here. Andy needs to take a lot of the blame here. His cues are no doubt setting up the PM and dev in their expectations. It's a dearth of leadership, a default to anxiety. Unwilling to make the hard call of have the assurance of knowing what to do at any point in time, and experience to back it up. People pleasing instead. And just letting things riot. This is the strategy of giving the badly behaved 8 year old whatever they want lest they throw a tantrum. Or rather. Fearing to have any kind of adult oversight at all just on the imagined possibility of the child not liking you as much ( which as it turns out is utterly wrong - just your own anxiety monster feeding you lies ). He's not going to change. And his mental landscape at this point is well known to me.

In the end I suspect the project will eventually limp across the line. Andy will get relief about it finally being over and being able to charge for it - and in that relief learn absolutely nothing about how fucky the project was or that it was allowed to continue on for so long. He will just take that sense of relief and be happy. Which is also his MO. Fuck it. Bodge it. Get something over the line. Release anxiety. Take no lessons. Not plan for the future. And eventually slowly strangle yourself to death with accrued problems until you bail and run ( something he was guilty of in the past and I have at every step of the way had to hard counter - today this is no longer true, that responsibility now lies with others ( who have no clue that this is required or the inclination to do anything about it - they are after all at the end of the day, employees who do what Andy says, including setting everyone including themselves on fire )).

Anywho.

I waited around for a go live that never came. And felt tired and increasingly not good.

My sleep is genuinely fucky. I am having trouble sleeping for more than 90 minutes without waking up in some form of pain, or breathing issue or something. The whole wacky lung thing or whatever it was before surgery whilst it has not returned in the same way, is still there and has crept back, manifesting in a different fucky way. Pressured. Internal liquid movement when I shift from side to side. It's not good.

I dozed later in the afternoon until the MOT place called me up to come collect. They wanted to change my battery. It's not that old, what, 3 years ? I suspect they had picked up it was fairly flat again ( I have some subtle battery draining issue in my car ). I let them change it. Probably a mistake. I should have at worst just gone and got a free replacement for it - it's guaranteed for 5 years. They were just on the make for selling me extra stuff. They also charged me £65 for a wheel realignment, which, is pretty shit. I get that for free elsewhere. I had no choice this year, had to go here. So. Limited options. I wont be coming back unless I have to.

I took Athena out with me again to go pick up the car. In hindsight probably a mistake. She shuffled off into the city with me. Slow. Creaky.

By the time I got into the city with her I also felt shit. Dizzy. A little woozy. A little sick. If I didn't know better I would circle again around a shitty heart. But whatever.

Picked up the car, went home.

At home I discovered Athena has been peeing near the back door. I did glance at it yesterday and wonder. And yeah. She's started to pee inside near the back door. For whatever reason she hasn't gone out the door to pee. Almost certainly because she didn't feel up to it. This is super duper out of character for her. And another marker that I think her time is really running out.

I cleaned it all up - feeling ill as I did so - sorted it out. Going to have to keep an eye on that. But I kinda know there isn't anything I can do about it. It's just time. Catching up.

I collapsed back into bed, woozy, sick, out of breath.

Ho hum.

I am badly ill. I struggle often. And days like today I struggle more. But that's still not the worst I do. I have actually been productive today and out. I think a bit like Athena, my time maybe running out too. It's hard not to reach that conclusion when you get in a bad state from just a 15 minute walk.

Eh well.

Heard back from the GP at the end of the day. Got an appointment.

9th January.

As I expected. My £20 bet was always a slam dunk.

The way I have felt today, I am not terribly sure either me or Athena will reach that date.

New washing machine turns up. At this moment in time it feels like a massive mistake. More energy to expend to get things ready for the install and replace. I don't have that energy. I'm going to have to find it from somewhere. Too late to cancel the order.

Today has been hard. Sobering. Unhappy.

The wheel turns, perhaps tomorrow will be better. Or at the very least, the end is mercifully quick. No chance of the latter.