Crunch, briefly

It's after eleven on a Saturday night and I just got in from work. That's been the shape of things for five weeks, and it will be for a few more. The game ships this summer, and the last stretch before a game ships looks the same at every studio I've heard of: long days, weekends, dinner out of paper boxes on a conference table, and the bug count on a screen in the hallway going down, and up, and down.

I'm not going to complain, quite. I knew it would come. I chose it, more or less, the way you choose the weather by choosing a city. And there are good parts: a whole floor of people working on one thing, jokes that only make sense at one in the morning, and a bowl of clementines that has started turning up on the front counter every evening. Nobody has owned up to it. Thirty tired people take one on the way out every night, and none of us has asked.

But I haven't read a book since May. My laundry has formed a government. On Wednesday I fell asleep on the late bus home, and the driver woke me at my stop, because he knows my stop now, which is either very kind or a sign of something.

A few more weeks. Then I'm going to sleep for a while, and walk somewhere with no destination, and write here about anything else.