After my startup i felt empty and unable to bring up even the slightest amount of energy to deal with anything related to business, legal stuff, marketing or startup things. However i was still in love with software in general and knew I needed to recharge but wanted to stay in the industry in long term.
This are the things i tried and how they worked out for me:
The bad:
- do "nothing"
this could be healing for certain people especially in combination with a 'holiday' setting. But i have never really
enjoyed holidays and after one week of relaxing i felt it could just lead into a real depression and i got as fast out
of this as possible. Important was the distance from what i do, to be able to think the right amount, but not have too much freedom to overthink and start a brooding kind of thinking.
- try to do "agency work":
in theory this was a good idea, i could earn a bit of money, have a working contract to calm down banks and landlords and at the same time learn a fast paced client focused development setup. However I hated all the people and how they saw life and tech compared to my hacker or hustler acquaintances from before. Also the stress was not self made but the agency constantly exerted pressure to fulfill client deadlines so i could not stay distanced enough to really heal and recharge or even think the healthy amount. Also the programming was the bad kind of programming, it does not help to become a better dev to just learn how to pump out work using rails gems.
The good:
- work for an NGO:
I joined an NGO to improve health software systems for africa. This was exactly right in many ways: I could continue writing software and continue becoming a better developer but without the pressure to be "perfect". Working part time i could scale up and down as I needed. I could help people and got all the gratification of knowing to do the right thing. Also I got a new perspective to the world and practicability of ideas being in liberia and working with developers from nigeria. Time to get out was when NGO politics started getting in the way of writing software.
- work for a huge ecommerce platform:
this sounded bad and similar to the agency in theory but in practice was really good. I did not give the slightest about the product so remained pretty distant but was in a constant setting of a huge and successful company and experienced all the problems and solutions to team productivity and project management as well as inhomogenous large scale software systems. Also i earned enough to pay off all debts and have the existential threat of thinking about money removed was the final ingredient to recharging for me.
- making music:
Working on a product I don't care about when I worked for years on a product that I dearly loved and lived opened up a hole that I first filled with reflection and breathing but when that was enough I needed to be active and made a lot of music. This was very therapeutic and fulfilling at the same time. Just the perfect combination for my final recharge and mental digestion.