Dec 28 2006
The Great Outdoors
I had it all worked out. In the last three months of the year I would launch three new sites. The first one was for a client: love2pay.com. He just wanted an adult directory, so I started working on it immediately and I finished the job before deadline, which was definitively a first-timer in a very long career of working with deadlines. The client looked at it, was happy with the results and I moved on working on the second site bdsm.ameanet.com; a project I had started two years ago, without ever finishing it. Since then my idea about websites had changed dramatically, so I decided to start from scratch again. (Ever heard a better excuse from a man who lost his backup?)
Two weeks into that project, the client, who is a starting entrepreneur on the web, rang my doorbell.
‘Actually, an adult directory is nothing more than a lot of pages with links..’
He look kind of puzzled.
‘Don’t forget all those nice greasy banners at the top and the bottom of the pages,’ I replied.
There was no stopping him. He wanted more. While he started listing what he wanted to add to his site, the project became bigger than anything I had ever built on the Web, but since he is a nice guy, I started working on love2pay.com once more. ‘Do not worry!’ he said when he left. ‘There is no real rush.’
I looked at him like I was shot in the butt with an arrow.
All through the project I kept moaning and groaning, but I finished it in 40 days and technically speaking it is a shining example of a web developer’s good behavior. All databases are in sync and the interface architecture is a computer newbies wet dream. You don’t see a lot of sites like that on the web these days. A friend suggested we should have a drink to celebrate, but I refused and that does not happen very often either.
I knew very well why I was so edgy. Months before – in a fit of megalomania, I presume – I had decided that I was going to interview 365 inhabitants of Amsterdam all through the year 2007 for a project called amstelvisie.com. Short interviews, of course, but 365 short interviews still make up for a lot of preparation, video shoots and editing time. My response to skeptics who did know what I was heading for had been arrogant, to say the least. ‘Listen I have been a journalist and a photographer for most of my life, so I should know all about planning!’ Forgetting for a moment there that I had never been too good working with deadlines. ‘What I will simply do, is make sure that I have at least one month of interviews in stock before I even start on January 1st, 2007.’ There was a lot of nodding going on, but nobody seemed quite convinced.
Now I am sitting behind my desk looking at the clock and knowing that I have less than 100 hours before amstelvisie.com is launched and when I look at the material to be webcasted I can see that I am completely covered for the first day of 2007. That interview is already on the server although it is not linked. It will be linked on January 31, 00:00 (CET).
Tomorrow I have an appointment for interview #2 and for the rest I am listening to friendly excuses coming from people who do want to interviewed but only *after* the first week of 2007.
Why did I do this to myself? Well, after sitting on my behind, constructing and updating websites for years in a row, I thought it was time to explore the Great Outdoors once again. I live in a one-room apartment, where I eat, sleep, bath and work. The walls started to move in on me. Believe me, I will make this deadline or I will die trying.