(no subject)

Ever have one of those days when, as much as you'd like to, you can't get productive?

Yet another one of those days for me. My brain's just not feeling it...

Rar.

I know one of the reasons I can't focus today...

...I've been doing work for 4 clients today, been told that I might have to do work for one more, and have to start thinking through additional work for a couple of these clients. One of them is having a site rolled live Monday. Another wants to roll live on Thursday.

This may not sound all that bad, you might think, until you realize that these 4 clients that I've been working with have web systems written in 4 wildly different programming languages, with 4 wildly different purposes, and trying to constantly switch mental gears between them is just starting to tax my brain, if not to the breaking point, at least to a point of imminent discomfort.

It's an uphill battle to focus today, since I'm having to retool my brain when something new gets thrown at me. This jars my train of thought, taking me time to get the train onto a completely different track and derailing any progress I've made on the previous project. This loss of being able to focus on any given task serves only to annoy and frustrate me, which doesn't make for a happy or productive programmer.

The real problem, I think, is customers going "I need X now! We need X to be ready any day now!" where X is not what I'm working on currently. If I start working on X, then before long they want Y. Sometimes, the same client will want X, then Y, then Z, then ask me why X isn't done yet, or why I haven't gotten back to them on Y, or when they can expect Z to review. I'd love to just tell them, "Look. I'm working on N for another client. When that's done, then I can get to X. When X is done, Y and Z will follow."

But I can't. My boss doesn't like it when I tell customers "No". Even telling them "Wait" is dicey, but I've started doing just that. Why? Because there's no other way for me to do effective work and keep my sanity. We only have one other developer, and I a lot of these things I can't give to him without spending a few hours getting him up to speed on the details of the project. That's time that I could be doing the work myself. On top of that, I'm the contact that most of these people use, so even if he was working on the job, I'd be fielding all the calls and emails. Even that's starting to annoy me. I sometimes wish these clients would just leave well enough alone at times.

I really do love the job, and I love what I do. Sad thing is, it burns me out on coding for personal projects. There's a lot of things I'd like to do for Z's site, and the church website, and eventually for my own website (if I can ever get a coherent concept for what to focus my site on), but the last thing I want to do when I get home is code. It's sad, because I love to do it, but I find myself just trying to relax when I get home. Code should be relaxing for me, but it isn't. Of course, having a yappy corgi who wants your attention and won't let you code doesn't help either.

Maybe I should ask God for more polite clients who give me lead time instead of last-minute requests, or maybe just ask for more piece of mind (and hours in the day - that'd be nice too!)

Grrr.

I came in an hour early today. I'm finishing my work up, and my boss comes into my office.

"We need to do two things to Client X's site."

He gives me a basic rundown, even though he's already emailed me all the details. Once he's finished, I ask him, "So, when do we need these done?"

"Today. I know that if we wait, he'll call me at home tomorrow, and I don't want him calling me during the weekend."

...

I said nothing, but in my mind, blood was boiling. "Oh, " I thought, "so this is all about your weekend. You don't want your weekend ruined. I have to pull an extra hour or so today so that your precious weekend remains sacrosanct, while I gave up my weekend last week so that we could hit a surprise deadline. I'm glad what I want doesn't enter into the equation, because that would get in the way of what you want."

I thought Fridays were supposed to be good days. Today feels like a Monday, other than getting paid.