Alright, let me tell you about what I call the ‘third crisis’. It wasn’t some big world event, just something personal with a project I’d been tinkering with for ages.
You see, I had this little piece of software I was building on the side. Not for money, really, just because I liked it. But man, it felt cursed sometimes. Twice before, it hit the wall hard.
The First Two Hits
First time, the main library I built it on got completely abandoned. Like, poof, gone. Had to basically rip out the guts and start again with something else. Took months.
Second time, my fault maybe. Used some super cheap cloud storage to keep costs down. Woke up one day, and half the data was just… gone. Corrupted. No good backups. Had to piece things back together, lost a lot of history. Another massive chunk of time wasted.
Then Came the Third
So, I rebuilt. Again. Thought I’d finally learned my lessons. Used better tech, solid backups, things were running smoothly for almost a year. I was actually starting to feel proud of it, you know?
Then I got an email. The core external service this whole thing relied on, the one thing I couldn’t replicate myself? They were changing their entire system. The old way was being shut down in 90 days. The new way? Completely different. Not just a few tweaks, a total overhaul would be needed on my end.
That was the third crisis.
My first reaction? Just sat there staring at the screen. Felt like a punch to the gut. Seriously? Again?
I spent the next few evenings digging into their new documentation. Tried to figure out what it would take.
- Scoping the changes needed.
- Estimating the time commitment.
- Looking for any possible shortcuts.
It wasn’t pretty. It meant tearing down significant parts of my logic. Again. Probably hundreds of hours of work. Again.
I actually started coding the changes. Spent a weekend fueled by coffee, trying to make a dent. But my heart wasn’t in it this time. It just felt like… a chore. Like I was trapped in a loop, constantly rebuilding the foundations because the ground kept shifting beneath me.
I stopped coding mid-week. Pushed the chair back. Walked around a bit. Thought about the first time, the second time, and now this. Three major blows, all from external things I couldn’t control.
I realized I was done. Not angry, just… tired. Tired of rebuilding the same thing. It wasn’t fun anymore. The joy I got from building it was completely overshadowed by the dread of the next inevitable crisis.
So, I archived the project. Didn’t delete it, couldn’t quite bring myself to do that. But I stopped all work on it. Shut down the server. Let it go.
It stung for a while. Felt like giving up. But honestly, it was also a relief. That constant low-level anxiety about what might break next? Gone. Sometimes, you just have to recognize when the fight isn’t worth it anymore. That was my third crisis lesson.