Hey friends!
I've been away for a while now, close to 3 months. But it wasn't you, it was me. Myself and my 40+ member team got laid off from a job that we all poured my heart and time into. I was crushed, so much so that and decided to take a sabbatical from IT, computes and nearly all social media. That's right I did nothing digital except playing some games with my spouse. It was glorious and exactly what I needed after working 80+ hours a week for 75% of 2023.
I was burned out. So burned out that even though I've been hacking on a computer for nearly 4 decades, I wanted to never do it again. I got to the point where I avoided the computer like someone might avoid a terrible addiction. The whole situation was depressing, I love crafting software, but I was mentally and physically spent.
After a couple months of avoidance I started to again think of my personal projects. Also it's nearing that time when I need to make some money again. So a couple weeks ago I did the only sane thing I could do. I dusted off my personal projects and I'm happy to say that I've got the love back and starting the interviewing thing.
I'd love to say that I have some cool new projects to share with the FOSS world but, they aren't that far along yet. Hopefully I'll be there pretty soon since I'm really enjoying my coding time again. I've finished some cool features, wrote a portion of a new podcatcher using java21 virtual threads, wrapped up a java indieauth implementation for a blogging platform and begun an interesting project with a friend.
All of this is for fun and there's no meetings and misguided agile-fall ceremonies I've been forced to perform. I've just been having and that's the secret to getting over the deep burnout that has plagued me.
How do you avoid burnout when most jobs these days have overreaching demands? That's what I'll be contemplating next and perhaps for long time to come.
