Crunch is bad

3rd September 2026

So my real job got really busy, I did six months of work in three, which broke me a little bit and then I spent three months trying to catch up on all the things I had deferred. Crunch is bad. I knew this going in and did it anyway, but never again. What I had not accounted for is the long tail. After a period of crunch it takes a while for the body and mind to recover, and in my case there was still a massive pile of work to be done so I couldn’t really give myself the time I needed.

People warned me, I listened, I trusted them, I did it anyway because I had something to prove. The project was a success but the personal cost was too high. They were right, I was an idiot. My manager was disappointed, that hurt, he would have preferred I asked for help, I should have. Never again.

The good news is I now have time to work on personal projects again. There is still a pile of real work to be done but that can wait till real work time. See, I’m learning.

I’m excited to share one project with you, I’ve been working on it for a few weeks now and it is almost ready for publishing. A minor issue is that browsers, especially Chrome on Android, do not like HTTP only sites any more. So this blog and my new project is in an odd corner of the internet a lot of people can no longer access. So I need to get on with adding TLS support to my server and make it all secure. But no rush, no working all hours, I must remember to eat, sleep and exercise and absolutely no crunch.