oh man that hit close to home, my brother once called my planning "color coded anxiety" and I was so mad because he was right. I went from like six different notebooks down to one tiny pocket notebook and honestly feel way more on top of things now.

That "felt solid right away" thing is tricky. I used gravel on a 60-foot fence two years ago and the wobble stopped once the dirt packed in around it over a few weeks.

Oh man, that's rough. I had a buddy do something similar with my deck - he swore up and down that using deck screws instead of proper lag bolts would save me time. Fast forward two months and the whole railing was wobbling like a loose tooth. Had to tear out half of it and redo it myself, plus the material cost. In my experience, people who offer "help" like this usually have good intentions but terrible follow-through. Your neighbor probably genuinely thought he was being helpful, but that doesn't make the leaning posts and wasted weekend any less frustrating. Hope you can find a way to fix it without making things awkward - maybe just tell him you're going with a different approach next time and leave it at that.