Work has been crazy over the last week, really crazy. After ending up with stress about three years ago (it’s true, you don’t even know you have it) from the amount of work I was doing (designing, coding and running 17 websites at the same time, singlehandedly), I promised myself I’d watch out for it happening again.
Since then I’ve been pretty careful, whenever things were starting to get too much I’d get a grip and take a step back from it. Work is work, but it is never worth losing your health over (Are you reading this Jess Unwin?).
The strange thing is, as mad as things are at the moment, with looming deadlines, I appear to be getting a kick out of it. Don’t know why – I have a whole load of stuff to be finished by the end of the week and it will be seat of the pants stuff to get it finished on time. But at the same time, I’m doing some great stuff – I’m looking at a hundred lines of code or more that I’ve churned out two days before and I’m thinking “Hey – that was clever, passing that to a function there so I can re-use it… well done!”, yet at the time I don’t remember making conscious decisions to plan ahead like that.
I think I’m in the zone. Oh yes, that’s what it is. You know when you’re there, and you don’t think too much about it because you might snap out of it. But it’s a great feeling – you’re flying along and everything is clicking. Most of the time it happens on the pool table down the pub – you can own the table for the whole night, pulling off everything you try. Then the following week you’re back to shanking the cue ball into some bikers’ pint!
I’m going to love it while it lasts – if I make the deadlines and get the job done I don’t mind being mortal again next week. For now, I’m in the zone!