Turning a corner

The work project that's had me so foul-tempered and exhausted the last few months has turned a corner, and once more, I think I can see normalcy approaching.

I don't mean to overstate how good this is. The project is still something of a boondoggle, with most of what could have been good about it crippled, so an investment of several years and a lot of money is largely relegated to being "not in the way" instead of actually benefiting anyone. Leadership is still absent and I'm still frustrated by knowing how badly mismanaged things have been.

But these are all things that I can pretty much say are in the past: the opportunities to avoid those problems are gone, no sense dwelling on them. Within the realm of possibility that remains, there are a lot of good things to be found. The crushing burden of backlog has been caught up with and there's every expectation another one won't build up. Yesterday we did a big audit that was a key step in making all the procedures smoother and the data more meaningful from here forward. The guys are happier with the system than they've ever been (and are largely unaware that that's because it's been neutered so badly -- having it not cause them problems is enough to make them happy, their expectations don't also include it improving things, the idea doesn't even occur to them).

And for me, I can finally start to look at the time when this doesn't consume virtually all my time, when I can work on other projects. This won't go away, there's still a lot to be done, but it's not a crushingly urgent top priority, and it won't be to the exclusion of everything else.

Maybe I won't have to even write about this stuff in my blog many more times. That'll be nice, eh?