So I realized on Christmas day that my work schedule was actually taking a toll on me. I've been working 16 hour days for the last 6-8 weeks because of a project that needed to be complete by end of year. Christmas day my wife opens up her presents and I tell her that she still has another at my mom's because I had it shipped there. We get to my mom's and I ask my mom about it and she looks at my really confused "Uhhhh, we took it over there.... didn't we?" and I really have no clue. I'm confused as fuck. So I think okay, well then it would be in the spot where I put all her gifts. So then later my parents give my wife and I a gift. And my wife says "oh this will go great with the chair Mupepe got me" (the chair is the gift I had shipped to my mom's). Now I'm really fucking confused and it started to come back. Not only had my parents brought the chair, I gave it to my wife already. I couldn't believe I had fucking forgotten. I've never felt like that in my life. Even the foggiest memory had more recollection than this. It felt like I was going crazy.
It wasn't just the hours at work. I can handle the hours. It was the actual stress and coordination of a million moving parts and the herding of the incompetent people that I relied on to make sure it all got done. I was having nightmares about this project. One night I had a nightmare that I was presenting shit to upper management when I noticed a mistake in my data. Sure enough, I wake up and double check my work (that had already been distributed) and found the same exact error from the dream. The constant cover your ass nature of the project, politicking and last minute fixes were something I'd not yet experienced as this was the first time I'd helmed a project of this size. Beyond that the senior level people I know, many of which have been with the company for 30-40+ years all said it was by far the worst project they've ever been on.
I've seen people at work have breakdowns before. I guess I just didn't realize how close I was to having one.
