About those casualties of war...

[ Entry written after the fact and retro-published to the date of occurrence. ]

As the stress coach, Garrett J. Braunreiter pointed out a few years ago...

"At the turn of the century—before the fax, modem, cell phone, and computer—the average American workweek was 60 hours long. By 1970, it was down to 37 hours. Today, the average worker puts in 46 hours a week at the office and six more at home for a total of 52 hours, according to recent surveys. In addition, 40 percent of those surveyed said they often work up to 10 more hours for extra pay, adding up to 62 hours—two hours longer than in the horse-and-buggy days."

Being an "old soul", I apparently am quite fond of centuries gone by. I work fifty to sixty hours in the office and at least another twenty at home, writing fiction. Of course, there are those who would say, "He's a manager and a writer. He doesn't really work."

In fact, just last weekend, I overheard two of my developers in conversation. One said, "Who else is working this weekend?"

Another responded, "HL is here."

The first replied, "I asked who was working this weekend?"

At the time, I was actually coding—upgrading the UDF Editor to support new features in EnvisionConnect. I pretended not to hear the joke.

In the last year, my team has worked an average of sixty hours per week per person. Everyone has essentially ignored their stress in favor of reaching our goals for the year. We lost a few teammates as we grew closer to the finish line. They took jobs in less stressful—less transparent—work environments.

...and less than 24 hours after we crossed the finish line, I was transported to the emergency room with pains in my chest.