My PM is asking why we're behind yet they're the reason I'm getting nothing done.

I'm the lead dev at a small agency, and I'm in a tough spot. We're in the middle of what was supposed to be a simple two-week sprint, but the project is completely off the rails.

The client is sending a constant stream of quick 5-minute changes directly to me on Slack all day. The problem is, my PM isn't running any interference. They're either MIA or just letting the client bypass our entire process.

So, of course, the project is now behind schedule. And who's getting the heat for it? Me. My PM is now asking me in our stand-ups why my velocity is down.

I needed to prove that I wasn't just slow or slacking. I needed an audit trail so for the last week, I've been running a time tracker on my machine, not for billing, but as a defensive log. I'm using Monitask because it tracks which apps I'm in, so I can show that my actual coding time in VS Code is being eaten alive by responding to the client in Slack.

The report is exactly what I thought. I've lost over 10 hours this week alone to these unscheduled requests. Now I have the proof.

The challenge is now how to present this data to my PM without sounding defensive or like I'm just trying to throw the client under the bus? I feel like I'm stuck in a political mess and just want to get back to coding.