There will always be bugs

For ever and ever, world without end

There were crises in two different projects this week. I’ve had trouble getting blocks of time to work in between the emergency meetings. And my daughter came in the middle of one of those blocks and reminded me that we said we’d watch The Sound of Music together¹. Now.

My first thought was to tell her let’s do that next week. I have too many bugs.

And then I thought, no. There will always be bugs².

I can’t stop my life for bugs.

The same goes for conferences. I don’t go to many, because we all know that in an 8–10 hour conference, maybe 30 minutes are actually relevant to you. A great conference is one where your eyes light up at least once, and you meet interesting people. Did I have 12 hours (including travelling) for a conference with all these crises?

And I realized heck, yeah. I’m not an open heart surgeon where people will die if I don’t finish the project. I’m a programmer. And conferences are a great place to hear new ideas and gain perspective³.

Bugs are a black hole that you can get sucked into. There is always another bug, always something else to solve.

So many bugs to suck you in [Dall-E]

Sometimes, you just need to accept that you won’t solve all the problems today.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by — Douglas Adams

[1] My daughter is almost 12 and has never seen the movie. I know, I am a total failure as a parent. Back ^

[2] “I can’t [sing], I’ve got a sore finger” has become our newest catchphrase :) Back ^

[3] It was Google Cloud Summit, and it was awesome. Back ^

Still waiting, 230 days. #BringThemHomeNow.

Check out my free and open source online game Space Short. If you like my stories and site, you can also buy me a coffee.