finished product

Ah, what a happy day. I pretty much took a break from a lot of my project management and administrivia duties today and actually worked on producing something. My management chain (one of at least 2 chains I answer to) has been talking about this report that they want for a while - just general, overview sorts of things that even a manager can understand. This division won't work on it. This other division has been working on something like it for a year now, but are way over-engineering it with no input from end users, so now managers have been saying - well, can we get some people from our team to work on it? So today I figured I'd work on it all by myself. So I worked and I worked. I used many of the things I've learned over the last 18 months in SQL and in playing with the data for the last (wow!) almost 7 years. And it worked. Even dealing with time format conversions worked. The queries are fast. The data makes sense, even for managers. I put all the output into an excel spreadsheet in a readable format. I ran 5 of the reports in quick succession. And there it was. A mostly finished product. Something where I added tangible value. Something that others had not been able to complete. Something that both I and others will use. It's been probably 9 months since I've been able to say that, so it feels pretty good. I usually work pretty hard at work each day, but it's all about trying to get other people to do things (with an endless list of people to nudge forward) or doing research on very hard problems where ther is no correct solution and finding even small answers requires luck or genius or both. So it was a small thing, but it was a pretty good way to end the week. And for once I actually look forward to going back to work so I can get feedback on my report and make it even beter. How weird is that?