The long-weekend fairy has snuck up on me again. (Don’t you just love it when that happens?) I’m tempted to scramble because there’s so much to do at work, but that’s when it becomes even more important to slow down.

I like web development and the ability to build something that makes people’s lives better. I need to figure out a way to reduce the stress of having a high “bus factor” – the risk to a project if someone gets hit by a bus (or wins the lottery, in a more positive version). You might think that’s a risk with rare consequences – after all, I’ve gotten hit by a bus precisely zero times. (Ditto for the lottery, but that’s also because I don’t buy tickets.) A high bus factor means that if two or more projects go critical around the same time, things get tough.

I liked working in a larger development team, but I haven’t been able to do that recently. I’m trying to prepare for the future by investing in training other people, but people shuffle in and out of teams, so it’s tough. But I’m picking up good skills in estimating, working with clients, digging into the possibilities of Drupal and Rails, and patiently sanding down the rough edges of the websites I’m building, so I’m making good use of the time.

As it turns out, piano is like yoga for the mind. Playing the scales is relaxing. You can tell when your mind drifts, because your fingers get tangled up or you hit the wrong note.

Building stuff is relaxing, too. I just have to dig deep enough into it to remember that feeling.