leaving the workshop a complete mess

The past 10 or so days I’ve been working with React, then I got sick so took a couple days off coding. When I recovered I finished off some bits and pieces in the client side of the NMM project and to continue needed to start working on the server side again. I’d not worked on the server side codebase for about 9 days and when I got back into it I had to think about where I’d left it off. Some of the tests weren’t working when I thought I’d fixed it - I guess I didn’t. Or I did but didn’t commit or push the changes.

I didn’t remember what I was doing on the branch and if I’d completed everything that I wanted to so I could merge the branch. I figured I must’ve completed everything as there didn’t seem to be anything else to add and it felt like I could move onto the next part of the project.

What I’m getting at here is it was a bit of a mess. It was like if I was in a workshop, building some project and I’d just left all the tools, the mess, the bits and pieces of the project - everything that I was using for the project. It was like I’d just walked out the door without even thinking about putting anything away, or cleaning anything up, or even leaving a note for myself about what to do next.

It felt like I’d left loose ends untied. The ends had to be tied up somehow, but I didn’t know how. At least not straight away. Eventually it came back to me. At least what I believed was the right way to tie it up came back to me. I could’ve been wrong. Memory is fallible.

This made it harder to switch to the server side context needed to get my brain into gear to start working. I made sure when I left the client side of the project I’d merged the branch I was working on into develop and pulled those changes onto my local develop. That way what I was working on has been wrapped up and I can start fresh without having to wonder what the heck I was in the middle of.

I’ll definitely remember to do it this time around when I’ve finished this bit of work on the server side.