Sometimes, just impossibly gently and in a way so fragile, things seem like they might almost make sense. Mostly they don’t, of course. Mostly, it’s all just a blur of panic, distraction, and confusion. But then some piece of code comes along, clear and simple and smilingly happy, and I can breath for a little while. Breath calmly, and type bits of text onto a clean screen and know that the database doesn’t hate me for squashing it into a form that it never liked. That things are bit-by-bit going into their correct places, and progress is being made.
Tomorrow—no: later this morning probably—the code, the database, and I shall slide back down the muddy cold slope, from the bottom of which no clear view is possible. There will just be a memory of a thought that sometimes we can see clearly, and that’ll be enough to keep us clawing back up.