I was having a very sound sleep session last night when I heard some light buzzing coming from nearby. I checked my phone and noticed that there was a missed call and a message for me. Hmm. Who could call at 2 a.m.? I had a good idea who it was, and my suspicions were confirmed when I listened to the voicemail. It was the team lead, requesting some help. When I heard it, I knew that it must be bad if he had to leave a message at such a time. Unfortunately, he didn’t leave a number that I could call him at so I fired a quick email to his blackberry. He replied quickly with a request for me to go online.
When I went online, I was told of a mini-crisis with directives coming straight from the guy that owns the client. The team lead and I had to spend time debugging something–figuring out why something was happening, and under what circumstances. Oh, man. This whole ordeal lasted for 5 hours. No kidding. At one point, my alarm clock actually went off. The familiar voices of the radio DJs were basically telling me to wake up, but how could I wake up if I hadn’t even gotten to the point of getting proper sleep? The irony killed me. Or maybe that was the fatigue.
After pushing our fix into production, it was easy enough for me to just rollover and get back to sleep. I got about 3 hours of sleep before waking up and heading back into office. I actually made it in just before noon. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been feeling awesome at all, but really, given the circumstances, why should I feel so fresh? I did get some kind words from people on the client-side as well as some people on my end. My time is apparently valuable. Who knew?
You know, it’s only after events like this that I come to realizations about my work ethic. Despite my frequent bitching and complaining and bouts of sarcasm in terms of the work, I actually do take some pride in what’s being produced. Sure, the site looks kind of pants right now, but that’s not under my control. I’m more concerned with the fact that the site works as promised, and that the client is happy. So, despite being asked to do things at an ungodly hour last night, I was actually OK with it all. More than anything, it felt like necessary. I almost feel a little bit crazy for feeling that way, but at the same time it’s something that makes perfect sense to me. That’s not to say that I can do this type of thing daily–I’d go crazy if that was the case. However, going the extra distance once in a while is entirely doable.
All that being said…it’s time I took a break. Soon.
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