Closing in on 9am. Preparations, too: Collecting information from too many sources: System details, change history, resolved issues, resolved ones. Trying to make sense of what they have in common, ignoring contradictions for now. The challenges of the factual will arise soon enough anyway. Hoping for patterns to emerge and for the imposter to stay reasonably quiet.
4pm and on. Getting off chair for the first time in hours. Dizzy, fighting a temporary urge to sort out and throw away things in the immediate surroundings. Opening physical windows instead, letting air float in and soothe a rough mind. Laughter of kids and a familiar song being sung next door. Almost dusk again.
9am and on. A different drive in a different day: Adding polish to things that were left rough for too long. Too, giving up on the idea of having things done in perfection, and getting used to a state where everything is good enough, or at least not too bad, to be considered done. Reaping what pragmatism has sown.
Schon wieder halb durch den Tag. Unten leert ein kühler Herbst ohne große Eile die Äste der Hofbäume. Irgendwo in einem Büro wird lauter diskutiert, der Ton lässt im Dunklen, ob die Stimmung geladen oder freundlich ist. Neue Gesichter, in den Fluren und im Treppenhaus. Graue Tauben auf grauem Beton. Anrufe in Abwesenheit, Benachrichtigungen, Schlagworte und vorsichtiges Schleichen durch den Kalender. Immer bemüht, nicht auf die Linien zu treten. Wenig Licht unter dichten Wolken, aber zumindest verzichtet der Mittag auf Regen. Die Stimmung wäre eher nach Schnee.
9am and on. Noticing the degrees of freedom in a morning filled with tasks yet lacking fixed timeframes and mandatory appointments. Browsing for music to dig into the next focus topic. Sun on eyelids, while sipping on the third mug of coffee. Odd rhythm, day and week.
4pm and slowly on. Segmented days. Stacking boxes used to work better in the past. Optimizing the space in between, too. A continuous state of work in progress, even though measuring the amount of work left open is much more impressive than measuring actual progress. (Context switch. Reconnect. Once again.)
9am and on. Some days flow some days stumble and some seem to wait indefinitely on a traffic light that never turns green. Stalled in process, but at least with sidesteps left to consider. (Also: Documentation woes. Learning curves. And the thin line between accidentially doing things wrong and explicitely trying to take experimental turns. Sometimes, writing down things not to do seems a good idea as well.)
4pm and on. Closing things, taking a few steps back to breathe without thinking. Having customers that caused a lot of effort move on never leaves one completely untouched. Even in situations that effectively left no other sane conclusion. (Some sunlight filtering through clouds. Entering text on the wrong side of a translation, getting weird results, taking too long to notice. Sometimes mind needs clean air and the vastness of an open sky above.)