Holy crap! Where the hell did 2010 go? Granted, my persistence and consistency around writing has never been stellar but a whole year without writing! Wow. And now look, it's almost half way through 2011 and I'm just getting off (on?) my lazy ass to do a bit of typity, type, type. Clickity-clack a whack a key.
So...where were we? If only I knew. Hence the pitfalls of not documenting aspects of your life - if you're me - you forget. Hmphf. Well, as mom always said, "No use crying over spilled milk." Not that I'm crying. Yet. Sigh, ok. Chin up, ladypants.
I've noticed that being a Product Manager, working toward releases, always having an eye on the calendar makes for lickity-split time whooshing. I think this is especially the case in the last year. The last year (approximately - regardless of whether it feels like two years), I've been working in an "agile" development environment.
For non-TechHeads, an analogy is slalom skiing. You know, the weird type of skiing that fucks up your knees because you're going over all these bumps every foot or two for an entire mountain side. Yeah. That. But in the workplace.
Specifically, for me, it means that we work towards a two week release of a product. That's every two weeks some product or feature hits the site. This may seem like a long time in between releases, but believe me, it's not. With all the shit that has to happen in between those two releases, it's not a lot of time at all.
Just think about your life chopped up into two week blocks. It's short sighted and regardless of what barriers I put up between my work life and my 'me-life', the chunks persist. I'm always thinking in terms of the next release and therefore always thinking in two week blocks. And to hit the deadline, the formula becomes "by X day, get Y done". Rinse. Lather. Repeat. You rarely enjoy a day for being a day. You hardly experience outside stimuli to break the mold, it's just work, work, work. Task, task, task.
Even in the best case when you come up for air and do some good old Quarterly Planning you're still putting time into a "chunk". Then before you know it, twelve months have skipped on by and you've got no posts to show for it. Le sigh.
Well, here's to overcoming obstacles and slowing down time. Here's to un-chunking 'me-life' and writing up a storm.
Cheers, my dears!
