Surviving Burnout (2015)

Thanks for the post. On reading it I couldn't help but wonder if burnout might follow you to running your own company. From personal experience, it can be intensely bad for mental health after the initial excitement turns into endless hard grind to survive, grow, keep the support of investors, etc.

> When the US grows up from its individual first, frontier moxie, pissing context it could have it too.

IMHO, this is not what is wrong with the system in the US. The problem is that the consumer of healthcare is doubly removed from the price.

First by the insurance company using the doctors. Second by one's workplace paying for the insurance. Is it any wonder that prices keep going up under such a scheme?

In short, depression, to me, was total and absolute hopelessness.

Burn out, on the other hand, brought me dread, anxiety, exhaustion, and the feeling of being trapped in a pointless but never-ending cycle.

If I were to dive into more details, depression gave me a rock-solid certainty that I could never be happy, or meaningfully enjoy life in any meaningful way.

There might have been some joyous and light-hearted moments in the past, and perhaps the future held some in store for me. I could smile if prompted or expected to. But these moments always were and always would be the accidents. And so was any past or present progress. Insignificant.

I knew that no matter what I would always revert to my norm: apathy and a deep-seated, always present, lingering painful despair. All while somehow remaining alive, without understanding why or how. Going to bed each day, half hoping that this time there will not be a tomorrow.

It also totally crushed any sense of self-worth I had until then.

The kicker being that this certainty and the blindness to anything positive that comes with it enabled a wonderful feedback loop.

Burning out mostly involved permanent and crippling stress and anxiety, accompanied by a permanent doubt on the usefulness of anything I did.

Anything merely evoking work, such as catching a glimpse of my IDE’s icon, evoked fear.

Nothing felt straightforward anymore. Everything required focus and attention, all the while stressed and anxious. Every task felt like it would be complex and difficult. Before I even started.

Simple things became difficult. Average things became exhausting. Difficult things? Insurmountable.

Anything less than absolutely straightforward made me feel as lost as a junior on his first day, unable to even figure out where to start. Except I knew had done these things before, harder ones even, and this had been my codebase for nearly a year.

Each day felt like pointlessly climbing a mountain, for no reason, good or otherwise. Each day was too short for me to get everything done. And yet too long. All while knowing that the next day would only be worse. With no end in sight.

No break ever was long enough. And each break’s end came with the slowly intensifying dread that came from knowing I was going back to that. And yet each break was always too long. There just was too much to do. All of it urgent, important, critical. Most of it pointless because, although finished, ultimately never released.

Needless to say my sense of professional worth was in shambles, and I often joked about changing careers and moving to the countryside to grow dandelions.

> Feel free to decline if it's too personal or you just don't feel like it.

I have to admit I hesitated. So thank you for your thoughtfulness.

I agree with everything you wrote.

However you misunderstood where I was coming from. I point out I was lucky enough to be able to take time off to focus on my health, and hint that that is sadly not something everyone can do.

I was able to do this not because of being employed in a high paying tech job, but because of strong union negotiated benefits.

I live in a European country with a sane perspective on work life balance and a strong social safety net.

I will also add that what was written questioned the public statements of individuals that write about dealing with burnout in a single month, not that the very probable situation where individuals have burnout and only have the ability to take a single month off exist.

Thanks, yeah I’m looking for ways to stay in the corp but keep it healthy. There are plenty of colleagues who lead heathy lives, so it’s definitely possible.