Alright, so people keep bugging me about that one period, that wild time at my old gig. Yeah, the one I’ve kinda nicknamed my “sex sex sex and sex” phase. And no, it’s not what you’re probably thinking, get your minds outta the gutter! It’s more like… you know when a record skips? And it just plays that same annoying bit over, and over, and over? That’s what it was. Pure, relentless, mind-numbing repetition of one single thing.
So, Here’s How It All Went Down
It all kicked off when this massive new project landed right in my lap. Big client, big pressure, the usual song and dance. I thought, “Okay, I can handle this.” Famous last words, right? First meeting, they start talking about what they want. And man, were they fixated. Like, super-glued to one tiny aspect of the whole thing. Let’s just call it ‘Component Z’ for the sake of this story, shall we?
The Daily Grind, Oh Boy
And let me tell you, they were obsessed with ‘Component Z’. Every single conversation, every email, every meeting, it was ‘Component Z’, ‘Component Z’, ‘Component Z’, and then, just to mix things up, a little more ‘Component Z’. We’d slave away, build something, show it to them. They’d squint, nod, and then go, “Yeah, but can ‘Component Z’ do this specific, tiny, almost invisible thing?” And off we’d go again. Days bled into weeks, weeks into what felt like an eternity. My whole existence became ‘Component Z’.
My schedule basically looked like this:
- Morning: Argue about ‘Component Z’.
- Afternoon: Frantically try to change ‘Component Z’.
- Night: Have nightmares about ‘Component Z’.
It was totally consuming. Other critical parts of the project? Just gathering dust. My actual will to live? Dropping faster than a lead balloon. We’d try to talk about, I don’t know, the actual point of the project, or maybe making sure the damn thing wouldn’t crash. Nope. Straight back to ‘Component Z’. It felt like they were just chanting “sex sex sex and sex” – demanding this one specific, intense, repetitive thing until we were all seeing stars.
What I Actually Did About This Mess
First off, I just tried to suck it up and get on with it. You know, “keep calm and carry on,” or whatever rubbish they tell you. I tried to gently suggest, “Hey, maybe we look at the bigger picture?” or “Are we sure this is the best use of, like, all of our time on Earth?” Sometimes they’d pretend to listen, nod, and then BAM! Right back to ‘Component Z’. I started taking notes like a mad scientist, documenting every single ridiculous request, every tiny iteration. My notebooks from that time are probably a biohazard.
I distinctly remember one meeting where I pulled up a chart. A whole chart! Showed ’em exactly how many hours, days, weeks we’d sunk into this one component versus, well, everything else. They looked at it, said “Hmm, interesting data,” and then asked for another tweak to ‘Component Z’. I swear, I almost threw my laptop out the window.
So, What Happened in the End? And What Did I Learn?
Well, eventually, the project saw the light of day. Somehow. And ‘Component Z’? It was there, polished until it gleamed, probably the most over-engineered single component in the history of mankind. Was it all worth it? Eh, debatable. The client was sort of happy with that one bit, I guess. But the rest of the project was a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster because everything else had been sidelined.
So, the “practice” I’m sharing here, my big takeaway from that whole “sex sex sex and sex” ordeal? Sometimes, you just get caught in these weird feedback loops. Someone high up gets a crazy idea about one specific detail, and it just snowballs into this all-consuming demand. You can try to reason, you can try to divert, but sometimes you just gotta grit your teeth, do the thing, and hope you come out the other side with your sanity mostly intact. And definitely try to learn how to spot these obsessive spirals a bit earlier next time. Or, you know, just find a new gig. That’s always a solid option too.
