I have the next week off, and my motivation to actually do anything is completely cratered. I just want to sleep.
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I have the next week off, and my motivation to actually do anything is completely cratered. I just want to sleep.
I feel like I'm ticking pretty much all the boxes for classic burnout, except ... my work life is pretty reasonable, I'm not generally overworked, and I genuinely like my job. But I'm so terribly worried all the time, just from following the wider tech sector (and the world in general). I feel dread even thinking about the future.
Can someone burn out from that alone?
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@datarama Sounds like TechnoWeltschmerz (I just made this up
).[rant]
"Tech" used to be optimistic, but it's turned out to be a cancer. I don't know how this gets fixed because greed controls everything.
[/rant]I'm in a similar boat, but since I work for myself & have customers, I can never completely detach to (attempt to) recover from the burnout. So I try to minimize it and just continue on the treadmill.
All that to say - you are not alone in this!
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Stress is exhausting.
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@datarama absolutely. Maybe you need some kind of renewal beyond just rest. Like what feeds you? Walk in the woods? Whittling? What is your thing?
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@jamesbritt I know! I've been on long-term stress sick leave before - a long period of never-ending overwork and tasks piling up faster than I could cope with no matter how much I worked into the evenings and weekends, and the body just ended up giving out. Took a very long time to recover.
But this feels different. My current work life is fine. There *are* periods of overwork, but they're well-managed. I don't bring workplace stress with me home.
Also, back then, I still had some motivation.
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@Elizabeth3 I suppose part of the problem is that I don't really have one anymore.
Programming has been my thing for most of my life (my mum taught me to code when I was a tiny kid, and I rather quickly realized that this was what my brain was *really* good for). But it seems increasingly meaningless now.
I've *tried* picking up more analogue hobbies, but nothing seems to actually pull me in.
(there's reading books - but I think I need something more than passive consumption.)
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@asmaloney The great thing about German (and my native Danish, for that matter), is that you can just make up words like that, and they're actually perfectly valid.
I really, really feel this. I've said before that the reason I've never really gotten into retrocomputing is that it's not really the old computers I miss - I miss the future they seemed to promise. Now I live in that future, and it sucks.
(was the promise betrayed, was it ill-considered or was it a lie all along? I don't know.)
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@Elizabeth3 When I was younger, a week off would typically mean I came up with some programming project just for fun, and then sit around hacking well into the night. Back during the Danish lockdown in 2020, tinkering on a programming language project was how I kept more or less sane.
But I just can't do that sort of thing anymore. Feels meaningless. I don't know if this is burnout, me getting older, or the disgust and alienation I feel with the tech world at large.
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@jamesbritt I distinctly remember a long time lying on the couch thinking about a personal hypertext notetaking system I wanted to make. I was too screwed-up to actually do anything about it, but I *wanted* to make something - even though I couldn't.
I've had depressive episodes before, but they've usually been like that too. I'd have something in the back of my mind I wanted to do, but been unable to follow through - now I don't even want to make anything.
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I dunno. I'm just so, so tired.
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@Elizabeth3 @datarama I don't know if this helps, but I've been finding some comfort lately in thinking of tech (and life) as an evolutionary process that has a lot of dead ends, but may ultimately surpass humanity in ways we can't even comprehend. It'll come from us, and hopefully reflect the best in us. I think the more we work together to help each other, and build tools to help each other, the more likely that is. What problems would you really like to help solve?
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@datarama
If you are in the northern hemisphere, I notice this season that the lower daylight conditions make me less stress resistant. Even if I am pretty happy otherwise.Of course the world news isn't helping...
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@faassen Autumn is normally my favourite (and happiest) time of year.
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dataramareplied to charles last edited by [email protected]
@charles @Elizabeth3 That does the opposite of help, but that's not your fault, so thanks anyway.
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@datarama
Then that doesn't explain that. I think in my case it's also because I am gardening less and gardening tends to help center me. -
@faassen I live in a small apartment in a city centre, so no gardening for me anyway.
(My lifelong preferred activity to center myself has been programming, and lately that has started feeling meaningless.)
