Well hello April!
Remember when I said that work was killing me but I thought things were calming down? They weren't. It's just been one thing after another.
But last weekend, we released the redesigned system! Yeah! And though it was a TON of hard work, I am really proud of what my team has done. We have really improved a system that is critical for the Agency where I work. We have made it easier for people to do their jobs. We have worked with users to make sure their needs are met by the new system. And we have raised the bar for all the other systems where I work. :-)
The release didn't go smoothly, of course. It rarely does. But because of some constraints, it almost went really poorly. In fact, Friday night we were considering rolling back and delaying the release, which would have caused all sorts of problems. We decided to regroup the next morning.
That night, I had the worst dream of my life. And that is saying something, because in the winters my increase of melatonin gives me really vivid dreams, and my depression and anxiety tend to make the vivid dreams mostly nightmares. I've been in war zones, I've been hunted by snipers, I've been chased by a shark, I've had crazy time limits to do important things, I've had ugly fights with close friends, and goodness knows what else.
Friday night my bad dream went from having problems with the release, to being naked in public, to the worst of all... my son almost drowning. Truly, that was the most awful dream I've had my whole life. I barely got there in time to perform CPR and get him breathing again.
I can't even think about it anymore. And I'm really mad at my psyche! As if I haven't had horrible dreams for a good chunk of my life, my subconscious now knows just how to hit me the hardest. My children.
The good news is that my developers worked late Friday night, so when we re-grouped Saturday morning they had a fix for us to test. We were able to release the fix on Saturday, and the new system was available for users Monday morning!
And now I'm taking a few days off to get a bit of my life back and mostly spend time with my children while their school is off for spring break!
