10am and on. Navigating contradicting requirements, getting used to the perception of stumbling your own yesterdays leg. Despite all personal doings and experiences, more than just once that kind of agile flight-by-sight kind of moving forward is tedious, error prone and time consuming. Sometimes, more traditional approaches to building things surely have a sweet spot.
9am and on. End of business year and its amazing consequences. Camera disconnected, microphone temporarily disabled, trying to focus in the chatter, trying to make sense of whichever mode of planning people assume to be the truth of the day. Experiencing the troubles of staying calm and open when communication gets to be unreasonably demanding and rough. (More coffee.)
Genügend Licht über den Dächern, und fast Sonne in kahlen Ästen der Bäume. An manchen Tagen spürt man die Kopfhörer schwerer als sonst. In manchen Situationen stolpern Telefonate durch ein eigenartiges planloses Schweigen, in dem man das Rauschen von Heizung und Stadtverkehr verblüffend laut vernimmt. Jemand versucht englische Phrasen zu strapazieren, als Lückenfüller, und scheitert. Aber das ist vermutlich nicht schlimm, es ist ohnehin nicht feststellbar, ob irgendjemand zuhört. Nach kurzer und doch viel zu langer Zeit endet der Spuk, ohne Ergebnisse und eine halbe Stunde älter. (Eine Randnotiz an den Tag formulieren. Neuer Kaffee. Und noch kein Kuchen.)
11am and slowly on. Warming up again, finally. Using headphones, not for voices but against the grinding sounds of gears running in sand today. There are good days, and there are days where to just hide from the waves. (And, in some cases, not being in charge is a relief, even if that doesn't mean one's able to withdraw from a great deep mess completely.)
9am and on. Caught between continuously reconnecting sessions and continuously getting distracted so they expire before any serious work has been done. There's a good mileage spent on this kind of boilerplate tasks, and at some point it becomes challenging to even remember what actually should be accomplished. (Also, on another note: Communication with group chats in a bigger meeting is a bad idea if the facilitator is both sharing screen and part of that very group. Know your distractions.)
Closing in on 9am. Reviewing yesterday, missing out on critical communication. Repeated insight: If people owning problems don't see their responsibility, problems won't get solved. Expecting people with tightly filled schedules to follow the "right" priorities even if it leads them off their current tracks is hope but not a strategy - and mostly pointless. And language barreers aren't something resolved easily on the fly. (Loads of small pitfalls. Considering wireless headphones to be able to get coffee without disconnecting.)
11am and on. Watching icicles grow. And a small airplane circling above the city, a vague grey shape suggesting the morning lost a lot of its initial clarity to thin clouds or floating fog. How to fill the empty yet short gaps in a tight rhythm: Trying to lead the model astray by discussing questions of metaphors and analogies, but getting stuck in ones own thinking even before dealing with odd responses. And trying to switch contexts profoundly, to avoid stumbling across similar names in different projects. Things get confused all too easily.
(Die Verkäuferin in der Bäckerei, die bisher immer ungeduldig und schroff Kunden zurechtgewiesen hat, ist seit Wochen betont freundlich, aber man spürt, dass ihr das schwerfällt. Man spürt das Geübte hinter den Worten, das Angespannte in Mimik und Gestik, und irgendwie ist dieser Zustand bedeutend verstörender als der, den man davor gewohnt war...)