> When I was running TinyPilot, I didn’t have time for technical work, which was a bummer because I love writing software.
> I’ve always loved programming, but I’ve never found it as exciting as I have in the last year. I’m awed by all the amazing open-source software that’s freely available.
Whenever I'm able to take two consecutive weeks off of work, it's like my brain STARTS the process of healing, and I begin to see a glimmer of hope that I could actually enjoy programming again. But then it's right back in, and the burnout and overwhelm is back immediately.
I realize I need to take extended time off work at some point before the burnout becomes much harder to heal from, but it's just never a good time. This year particularly feels so weird and uncertain.
From the last 20 years of bootstrapping to various levels of success, I now have an absolute rule: when I feel like I definitely cannot take a break _now_ that the time I must take a break, non-negotiable. Even a few days is enough. I have often felt outrage at having to invoke this rule, but the effect is so pronounced that I have always doubled down on it afterwards, as a life sustaining aide to my future self.
I think the problem is that I feel like I need a lot more than a few days...a 3 month sabbatical might be a good start. But I've heard from some people that you really need 6 months or more when you really hit a burnout breaking point. It's hard to pull that off, so for now I'm just relying on the coping mechanisms as best I can.
Perhaps your threshold is too high? The graveyards are full of indispensable men. Will your project actually fall apart without you? Even if it does, is that a reason to not treat burnout?
It's not about the projects and more so about the money and living costs and the instability in the world. I also have some expensive chronic diseases, which is problematic in the US.
I've thought about other options like part time contracting, though.
Health insurance that's tied to your employer is such a toxic pattern in the US, and it's so expensive to escape. I pay something like $550 a month because I'm not tied to a company and I'm young and healthy.
I have a few friends who have moved to a contracting model within the hardware world and haven't gone back to W2. I think they've had some issues with managing workloads, because they'll typically have multiple overlapping clients who have no awareness of each other, so occasionally I hear about someone being booked solid for a month or something like that when busy phases overlap. Balanced sometimes by 10 hour weeks.
> In the months after my son’s birth, I suddenly had no free time.
> ...
> I took a breath and realized the reason I had “no free time” was that several days each week, I’d take long walks downtown to enjoy an outdoor brunch with my wife and son. Or we’d host visitors from out of town to meet the baby. I had to remind myself that these were all good things that I liked doing, and I was still in control of my time should I decide to resume working.
When I had my first kid, I'd take her out for walks, or we'd go to the zoo, and then my "free time" (aka time by myself) felt like it was slim to none. As with you, I went through a similar sort of realisation that I had free time and was spending it with my family doing things I enjoyed.
I eventually struck a nice balance where I'd still do most of that but also would carve out solid blocks of time for doing hobbies/learning primarily after the family fell asleep, where I might otherwise just be trying to relax some more.
> I’ve always loved programming, but I’ve never found it as exciting as I have in the last year. I’m awed by all the amazing open-source software that’s freely available.
Whenever I'm able to take two consecutive weeks off of work, it's like my brain STARTS the process of healing, and I begin to see a glimmer of hope that I could actually enjoy programming again. But then it's right back in, and the burnout and overwhelm is back immediately.
I realize I need to take extended time off work at some point before the burnout becomes much harder to heal from, but it's just never a good time. This year particularly feels so weird and uncertain.