Blog 24 — Automation Diaries, Episode 3

We ended Episode 2 staring at a flawless Notion database that refused to do anything useful. The fields were elegant, the relations tidy, the dashboards immaculate — and absolutely nothing moved. Make blinked. Notion blinked. I blinked. Then I said the most dangerous sentence in the history of this association: “Fine. We’ll use Google Sheets.”

At first, it felt like cheating. No relations, no rollups, no aesthetic dashboards. Just rows. Rows don’t argue. Rows don’t philosophise. Rows sit there and accept data like obedient soldiers. We built a sheet: Name, Email, Artwork, Status. Basic. Brutal. Functional. Make connected in seconds. No scroll bug. No field mapping tantrum. No existential crisis. It worked immediately. Data entered the form → Make triggered → row appeared. Clean. Instant. Obedient. I leaned back and whispered, “This is… easy.” That was the first red flag.

Confidence is dangerous. Within 24 hours I was adding dropdown validations, conditional formatting, auto-counts, cross-sheet lookups. “Just a tiny formula here.” “Oh this would be useful.” “What if we track artworks automatically?” The sheet began evolving. Still manageable. Still stable. Make kept delivering. Rows kept appearing. We had movement — real movement.

And then, because apparently I cannot leave well enough alone, I said: “What if we automate the automation?” Enter Google Apps Script.

Now listen carefully. This is the part where intelligent people stop. I did not stop. I opened the script editor: blank screen, blank mind, wild ambition. The first function was innocent — an onOpen trigger, a custom menu, a tiny helper tool. I wrote it. Saved it. Ran it. It worked immediately. No errors. No warnings. Just a new menu appearing at the top of the sheet like a polite butler. I stared at it, clicked it. It did exactly what I told it to do. That was the second red flag.

Because something happens when a script works the first time: your brain erases the knowledge of how you built it. I reopened the code to review it. I did not recognise myself. Variables I don’t remember naming. Functions I apparently understood an hour earlier. Logic that looked suspiciously competent. “Did I write this?” Yes. Apparently. I tried to explain it aloud. Halfway through, I lost the plot. The script still worked. I no longer understood it. This is the exact moment you become dangerous.

The sheet now had Make pushing data in, formulas processing it, Apps Script modifying behaviour, custom menus, triggers. It was no longer a sheet. It was infrastructure. And infrastructure has gravity. At first it felt like freedom — no more Notion sync hell, no more relational delays. Everything moved. Everything responded. Everything obeyed. And that is when I made the fatal thought: “We can build the whole system here.”

That thought is the doorway — the quiet pivot from simple tool to core architecture. Google Sheets stopped being temporary. It became backbone. And once something becomes backbone, complexity multiplies silently. One script becomes five. One helper function becomes a framework. One dropdown becomes a validation system. The chaos was no longer external. It was now homemade. And elegant. Which is worse.

⭐ Best Quote
“Fine. We’ll use Google Sheets.” — spoken moments before structural escalation.

📜 Goat Bible Verse
When the database refuses to move, the herd shall turn to rows. And the rows shall obey. But beware: obedience breeds ambition.

Next episode: When rows start talking to each other. And I decide that automation needs opinions.