The thing that happened at work today and why I"m so thankful for my coworkers

 This needs talking about. This is important. I'm breaking the regular programming rules for this because this is the sort of stuff that makes me thankful, glad, happy, alright.

So I promised my coworkers I'd help out with an engineering project. They wanted to do it during a hackathon at work, I said alright. Didn't realize I was going to be doing the front part of it, something I'd never done before. And then expectations kept on rising and rising and rising until it became clear that it was going to be a two-week project compressed into 2 days. Mind you, this was a part of technology thing that I've never worked with before, have generally avoided working on because it's too confusing I'm too afraid and scared and I'll avoid it like fire if I can. Also I don't understand any of it, specially the way it's done in my team.

So I start in the morning. With nothing. I figure things out reverse-engineering everything. I'm stressed out, super stressed out because obviously this is not going to be done, I have no idea what's going to happen by the day-end, by the weekend by next week when the presentation is, because it's pretty clear I can't do it. Imagine somebody gave you a tough calculus homework at work and told you to get it done in three days. And it's been twelve years since you did any calculus. Also you can't look it up online because at your school or work, they have a different way of doing maths because that's how your coworkers like it. So now not only do you need to figure out calculus, you need to figure out how it's done at your place, understand all the complexities of it, and get it done in three days. Oh and by the way, you need to show every step, make it look nice, and they're going to send it to the popular journals, so unless you want to get humiliated or embarrassed you better get it right.

Figured it out all day long. By the end of the day, that is an hour ago I had a crappy version of one page done. With six more to go. And that was the easiest page. I had no idea where to go from there. It was tough. I was stuck. I had less than 24 hours to share preliminary results. I was freaking out. The plan was to stay up all night long figuring it out, slogging it through and have something that is not completely embarrassing by tomorrow. Just for the show. Then over the weekend, 24-7 I'd understand more things eventually and maybe something would work out. I knew it wouldn't because this part of the stack you cannot figure out just like that you need insight and experience and even then there's tricky thing with browsers and other minor things that can trip you up. i was going to be screwed that was clear as day. I didn't eat well, didn't go out on my walk, didn't write anything didn't leave my room.

I finished like 8 pieces of the nice chocolate in a matter of 2 hours because I was so goddamn afraid. The anxiety and stress was under control because actually meditation and mindfulness have been useful, but things weren't looking too good either way.

Then I found out a coworker who was working from Singapore, somebody I'd met back when I was there who was working from there. I begged him to help me with it, and he was like, alright. He said he wouldn't give his Friday night to me, but he'd be willing to spend the entire day setting up guidelines and starting the project for me, something I could pick up the next day. Thank gods. Thank the fucking gods. This is the biggest favor anybody has ever done for me and I'm so thankful for that.

I'd like to take this opportunity to appreciate my workplace, where my coworkers are amazing, they're so incredibly helpful and always work towards getting fellow engineers out of jam. I'm alive, I'm kicking, and I'm not stressing intensely about work anymore. I'm going to be late to bed tonight, but fuckit, it's a relief.