Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
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Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
1–10 of 31 posts
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#2In general, working sucks. Having to work, that is.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#3You need to get better at the administration side of your business pronto. What's getting you down is that you are apparently unable to control the relationship with your customers, both financially and with respect to the scope and definition of the work and that can become a real drag.
Once you have that under control I think you're ready for a re-evaluation of being burnt out or not. When I work real hard and don't get paid I feel miserable, when I work real hard and money flows in to my bank account I feel a lot better. Ditto for working really hard and seeing the work discarded or re-done several times. Inefficiencies like that can really get you down as well.
Being burnt out goes quite a bit deeper than this.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#4I don’t even know what I am working for at the moment since everything seems so unpredictable. Every feature that I design and code may just get changed or scraped upon completion. Even if I do complete it, when am I going to get paid for it? Or will I even get paid?
You are not burnt out. You are just living in fear. I totally understand. You are going to have to confront a different fear to change this situation: your fear of sticking up for yourself in contract negotiation. Bottom line: if someone owes you money, its your fault. If you don't know if you will get paid, its your fault.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#5It maybe just normal depression. It reads a little to me like you have lost the feeling of control and feel like everything slipping away... and that maybe manifesting as a coping mechanism as a form of depression.
To quote the intro from wikipedia, see if this is familiar:
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Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present.
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And most importantly also from wikipedia "Depressed mood is a normal reaction to certain life events" i.e. things have happened which have caused the fun to disappear. Remember if it depression, it happens to everyone and huge percentage of people reading this would have the same reaction to your situation.
I'm no expert on depression and its probably unwise for me to give any more advise but as far as I'm aware talking is always a start, and anecdotally its worked wonders for me in the past. Even just the process of explaining it someone else can bring perspective to things that seem out of control, the blog post may have already helped with this.
It might be a time for a catch up with a friend or your parents or something.
Or take up a completely different activity. I had a friend that studied psychology and one thing he said that stuck with me was "your mind gets stuck in loops, when you are in a mood you will only have thoughts related to that mood".
So an easy way to break the mental cycle can be do something else that takes your mind off it. I found squash good for this, its so fast, frantic, and full of surprises that for 30 minutes you are in a completely other world, and during that time your mind can relax, or process its outstanding stress.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#6In general, working sucks. Having to work, that is.
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar."
Drew Carey
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#7You might be burning out, but this is the "good" case of burnout in that there's an obvious cause, and if that cause is attacked head-on, your passion for your work will probably return. It's obvious that your clients are treating you badly. Not paying for work completed is never acceptable. It doesn't matter if "we didn't use the code". You did the work and should be paid.
Get an attorney immediately. I'm not saying you should sue previous clients. If the amounts of money are small, it's not worth it. But in the future, he will save you a lot more money than he costs. Every serious freelancer has one, for exactly the reason you've discovered. Get firm contracts written with unambiguous terms regarding project scope and payment, or you will be dealing with this for a long time.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#8How are you finding your clients?
In my experience, the best clients seem to come from relationships and networking. Clients don't screw people they got from valuable friends and partners. They do, however, screw people who are little more than an email address they got from a Craigslist ad.
Look for more leverage with clients by using networking - also, take the advice others gave and stand up to them with stricter contracts and hourly pricing.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#9I think in the next year or two we're going to see this more and more.
Degree qualified, startup fresh out of university with no post-grad work experience, failed startup, making ends meet with freelancing with little hope of rejoining a career track.
Now don't get me wrong, were all beating the Fuck Big Corp drum here, but you can't beat big corp for a relatively stable income and ratable work experience.
That's why my advice to kids is: Get that degree, get some work experience (1 year say), THEN work on that startup. That way, you have a fallback option.
Re: Am I burnt out? Or just not suited for this job?
#10It maybe just normal depression. It reads a little to me like you have lost the feeling of control and feel like everything slipping away... and that maybe manifesting as a coping mechanism as a form of depression. To quote the intro from wikipedia, see if this is familiar: ------ Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-bein…
It is sad that depression seems to have become a four-letter word. Too many people are afraid to talk about it or unaware about what depression really is.
Your suggestion about taking up another activity is spot on. When you define yourself by your work it is difficult to ever stop thinking about it. I still have problems putting work to the back of my brain when I walk home every night. I've taken up running and plan to take up airsoft in an effort to expand my horizons beyond just "how do I write that next line of code".