Had a very busy week at work, thus no blog posts during the week. Next week will probably be no different.

The project’s phase-1 code cutoff coincides with my last day at work (this coming Friday), which makes it a very firm deadline for me. And there’s so much still to do! If it was just code cutoff, then I’d know that I can still fix small things during the QA period – but now I won’t be there and it would be a lot harder for someone else to fix anything that I left broken. And if it was just me leaving, then of course there wouldn’t be as much pressure on the project itself.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked as intensely as I’ve done these past two weeks. I’ve worked longer hours, sure – and even longer hours for a longer period. Stretches of 55- or 60-hour weeks weren’t that unusual in Commodities. But then that was a different kind of job: I might work on a presentation in the morning, then do some pricing or modelling, talk to clients, talk to middle office to fix some problem with a trade, then go back to working on the presentation. Now I’m sitting and coding and debugging all day, and that takes a different kind of concentration.

By the time I get home in the evening, I feel completely flattened and squeezed out. Not so much physically – I get home at a reasonable hour, and get all the sleep I need – but mentally. Sit in the sofa and re-read some familiar comfortable book, or see an easy movie. If we had a TV I’d probably spend all evening zapping mindlessly between channels. (So it’s a good thing we haven’t got one.)

I’ve only got one more week left at work and still so much to do… On the other hand, since it’s only one more week, I know I can keep this pace up without having to pay for it later. Then I get 2 weeks at home, and if my brain is tired and not good for much more than watching TV, it doesn’t really matter at all.

I’m actually going to quietly sneak in to the office for half a day tomorrow, to knock some more items off my to do list – and then just pretend I had a very very productive day on Monday!