Poll: How are you doing currently?

I will preface this with the caveat that the advice I am giving is easier said than done.

Take vacation. Even if it feels like it will hurt the team, the real thing hurting them (and you) is that there isn't a system of trust between everyone. Take a week off, when you come back, figure out what people were blocked on, what broke that only you could fix, etc. and then work on improving those single points of failure. Driving yourself towards burnout is not doing yourself or your team any favors.

Mostly good.

The last few years have been rather tumultuous for all the usual reasons - the pandemic, seeing the team I managed (including me!) get laid off out of the blue just as the country entered its first covid shut-down.

For an encore, I had just started building a house and were only a couple of weeks past the point where I could have pulled the plug on that without incurring significant losses - so, unemployed and committed to increasing my debt just as income disappeared and nobody hired. Oops.

I've since found new work in the same sector I got laid off from, and at my current employer the culture is vastly better - from churning away at a large multinational to being an appreciated contributor in a small company, I really feel like Steve Jobs' quip - why join the navy when you can be a pirate? I certainly feel like a pirate now, in the Sid Meier's 'Pirates' kind of way.

Much more fun than being in the navy.

On a personal level, I believe I am past peak busy time with the kids - the youngest one is six now, and I finally, for the first time in more than a decade, find myself occasionally having time off to do something I enjoy, rather than something I have to do.

I've taken up photography again (was serious to the point where I had to decide back in the late paleolithic whether I wanted to become a professional photographer or go to engineering school - engineering won)

Also, I've started digging into the backlog of books and movies I've accumulated over the past decade, and even started building a decent home theater in the barn; disposable income is now higher than it was before I took on more debt while building a house, as my new job pays better and I also have a stable income from a couple of side gigs which basically are hobbies, but people are willing to pay me for the end product, which pleases (and surprises!) me no end.

So, all things considered, I probably should have sprung for a 'Very good' rather than 'Mostly good'.

Good poll, it made me sit down to consider how I felt for a few minutes. Surprisingly good, as it turns out. Thanks!

I think it's extremely scary that in the world's richest country, writing stuff about schools like "we don't have metal doors", "our barricade procedure" and "stopping power for bullets" is considered perfectly normal.

I was reading your comment and I just WTF'ed 5 times in a row. As a European, it's hard to wrap my mind around how simultaneously awesome and terrible the US has become. I feel terrible for you, and I'm extremely happy my kids go to a school without guards, without metal doors, with multiple, unguarded entrances, and so on. I hope your countrymen get their shit together and that someday this stuff feels like scary shit from the past. All the best to you until then, this stuff isn't OK and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Absolutely someone would buy a house with blemishes like that! Most house buyers look past that stuff, especially when the housing market is hot (which it still is). Get your house on the market without worrying about that stuff before the market cools off!

I don't know where you live, but there are a lot of investor type buyers who buy with no on site visit or inspection. Or generally don't mind taking on the site improvement issues. You may also be able to get a deal in place where you sell and agree to rent for x months.

Do you know that you need to make the improvements to sell? As in, have you actually tried to sell?