Today I was parachuted in to yet another project at work, doing something I haven’t done for a year. It involved a skill set I am qualified in (I got 100% in the certification exam), but I haven’t touched anything to do with it in over a year now.
Perhaps if I dress this up in analogy, it might make a bit more sense?Imagine you’re on the crew for an Apollo moon mission. You’re the backup crew, so you’ve been training and studying just as much as the prime crew for months. You’ve passed all manner of tests, and could be swapped in at a moment’s notice.
Now imagine you are pulled away on the eve of the launch to work on something completely differentsay the X15 projectfor a year.
Now imagine somebody walks into the astronaut office one day, and says “you’re going to be on the prime crew for the next Apollo flight, tomorrow”.
That’s what happened to me at work, and what keeps happening recently. It can’t really be avoided for all sorts of reasons, but holy crap is it ever stressful.
I spent all day fighting programming that should have worked first time. I made stupid mistakes that should never have happened. I asked colleagues stupid questions. I used to know this stuff inside out.
There were moments today when I found myself using a proverbial penknife to screw something together, when I had a full toolbox sat right next to me, untouched.
I got home, saw the mountain of washing up, and had a bit of a falling down moment. This triggered a rant from my other half.
I really can’t win.(I’m not even going to mention the iPad’s line of dead pixels, or the rubbish HTC Desire running out of memory again).