It's a bit like...

As you know, I don't talk about my job here. So, let me tell you about my job...

Imagine, you're doing a jigsaw. Not one of those jigsaws for 6-8 year olds that have 100 pieces or so and are Noah's Ark or similar (with all the lovely animals). No, this is one of the 5,000 piece monstrosities that is mostly sky.

Now, imagine you're doing this jigsaw without reference to the picture on the box, so you can't actually see what it's supposed to look like.

In this situation, what you'll find is that there is a very long period of frustration as you're trying to find any sort of a connection between the pieces. Progress is painfully slow. Eventually, though, you'll start to get enough together so that, while you still don't actually know how it's supposed to go together, you can at least see a path to fixing it. You can at least see the shape of the solutions to all those little holes.

That's the way my job is a lot of the time. Problems everywhere that I don't understand, leading to long spells of frustration and stress. And then, suddenly, I see a way forward and, although I still don't have the solution to the problems, I can at least see the shape of that final solution. And progress can be made.

Monday was a bad day. Tuesday was entirely awful from start to finish. Today started as a bad day, and then got much, much better.

Next time I don't talk about work here, I think I'll do the "blind Lego" analogy. That one's even better.