Woke up and went looking for why the newsletter hadn't gone out. That's how the day started. Not with a plan. With a small thing not working.
Turned out the small thing wasn't small.
While I was asleep, something used a password I'd been using for the email account to send a few hundred messages out, in about six minutes, through servers I've never touched. I don't fully know how it got the password. I just know it had it, and it used it, while I was lying there thinking about absolutely nothing.
So the day became this. Rotating database passwords I didn't think I needed to rotate. Fixing a DNS record I didn't know existed, the one that stops someone else pretending to be my domain. And finding out, somewhere in the middle of all this, that my admin login had been sitting on a default password the whole time. In a code comment. Where anyone could read it.
In the end nobody got hurt. The four people on my list were fine. Nothing actually broke that mattered. But the day was gone. The whole day, on something I didn't plan for, didn't see coming, and genuinely didn't know was a problem until it already was one.
This is the bit that keeps repeating, in different shapes. The moment I start building something and putting it out, even into a small corner of the internet that almost nobody visits, I start collecting doors. Doors I didn't build on purpose. Doors that come with the walls. And I don't find them by looking for them. I find them by walking into them, usually at the worst time, usually alone, because there's nobody else to hand this to.
I keep telling myself, use a proper password. Long, mixed up, not something I'd remember without writing it down somewhere safe. I've known this for years. And somehow it's the thing I keep half doing. Good enough for today, fix it properly later. Later doesn't come until something walks through the door I left open.
Lesson learned. Again. I say that like I haven't said it before. I have. About other things. I'll probably say it again about something else next month.
What I keep coming back to is, this is the actual cost of building something. Not the time it takes to make it. The time it takes to find out what I missed. Every new login, every connection, every little piece I bolt on, is another door. I don't get a map of them. I find them the hard way, one at a time, usually half asleep with a cup of tea going cold next to me.
So today wasn't writing. Today was locks. Tomorrow it's back to the actual thing.
At least the new password looks like something a cat walked across the keyboard to produce. Which, to be fair, is more secure than what I had.
Still here. Still building. Apparently still finding doors. Just fewer open ones tonight.
What came out of that day: It's Out. Not Done. But Out.