It takes a special kind of crazy to get through the final
stretch before a release. Better yet, crunch time requires the ability to
modify sanity. The best way I have found to deal with it is to abandon all
hope, allow it to envelop you, and simply let the madness
in.
People will send you videos, watch them, the videos won’t be
funny in the least at first, but over time they will become more and more
mentally invasive. Allow this. Delirium will set in, it’s ok, let it massage
your back, Shiva will guide you away from the hurt and the code and the mean
people that took your precious.
You will leave work, wake up, and feel like you never left.
This is good, this is progress. You will remember a task to be completed, and
do it although it has already been done, and in the back of your mind you know
it has already been done. You will be waiting on a deliverable for four hours,
only to find a problem with it the second it arrives, causing you to wait for it
until it is returned thirty minutes before you are scheduled clock out. You
know you are close to enlightenment when you no longer dread someone coming
in and asking for “volunteers.” You just fire up excel and lean back into that
groove you dug into your ergonomic chair.
You will get super angry at people crunching chip bags,
drinking the last of the coffee, and repeating the same lame ass story to
everyone. Over time this will mature into fantasies about walking up and jump
kicking them in the neck. You will get calls from family and feel
like they are strangers; you will walk around the parking lot on break talking to
your significant other, pretending that’s enough. It will either be an
argument, a planning session, a thing that holds you together, or something that sends you back to square one. This never
gets better.
And then one day it’s done, the game is released,
the bird is away, the dishes are done. And if you are that special kind of
crazy, you enjoy every day of that brief stretch of time before the next alpha
shows up. Also, Jerbz.
