I'm burning out, I figure

Last week was the last one at my old job.

After 2 years of doing mixed work of web developer and project manager, I decided it's time to figure out which direction to go and take some time off to relax. And I would finally have some time to visit my family and friends.

To my boss I said: "I need some time without PC" and this is the story I've been telling to everyone and to myself.

But it's not true.

Realization

Today, I have received notification from Github:

@hovancik ping.

It's from one of few opened PRs on my open-source projects. This PR is from March 27 and it's not the oldest one. That would be from Jul 5, 2017, almost a year ago.

And it's also not the only PR that someone is inquiring about.

Thinking about it I realized something that I didn't want to admit: the true reason for my "time off" is to find time to finish what I never managed to do in last months: opened PRs, bugs, unpublished projects.

Guilt

I don't know how to describe it, but there is a kind of guilt behind it: I'm failing my projects, my users, I'm not doing "my work". Problems at my day-to-day work had part in what I am going through as well.

And I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's here and it's having consequences.

It's hard to explain, but even when writing this I feel that hard-to-describe feeling of my head going to break at any moment, without-any-reason stress that you can feel physically, notion that you are stuck without any possible way out. It's sometimes hard to do anything at all, mind racing here and there.

And yes, I've become less careful and ended up screwing up stuff that costed me a lot of time and effort, resulting in more bad things happening.

Looking back, how many nights did I come back from work not able to talk to anyone, just quietly sitting for an hour or two? Or getting drunk so I can feel relaxed next day?

I should have known then.

But as this is rather day by day change, it's hard to see that one goes in the wrong direction.

The beginning of the end

In here, I wanted to write when, where and how I went wrong. Unfortunately, I don't know.

Going forward

Even though I should take the "time off" I was telling everyone I'm taking, I still want to do some unfinished work. There are few PRs I need to close as RGSoC is starting soon. And if it goes well, I might do some other ideas as well.

But I also want to take care of myself.

This means incorporating few changes to my life:

• coming back to exercising in the morning - it makes me energized
• more meditating and mindfulness - so I can see when my mind goes in wrong direction
• spending less time in front of PC
• more time in park with good book
• more time with friends
• making my life and work more organized to keep my mind free of worries
• figuring out how to find balance with my open-source apps - learning to tell people I have a life, too ;]

Let's see how it goes.

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