Finding time to rest
TAKING TIME FOR REST
I have come to the conclusion that I am experiencing a form of burnout. While working I notice myself in a steady state of fatigue. At first I thought it was my health. After an annual health checkup earlier this year I note of a lot of changes I needed to do physically to get back in shape. I wanted to do the same for my mental skills too. I kept trying to wrap my head around the different concepts of object oriented programming and how different engineers used them in different components of the Software Development LIfecycle of the applications and Infrastructures I was working with. After reading through some online forums I started noticing that alot of the people were mentioning how burnt out they were. That had me do some research on burnout and brought me to the conclusion that I was knocking off a lot of the symptoms and experiencing the same problems that others were dealing with. The problem with mental burnout is that you can’t do physical push ups to notice a difference in energy or strength. There is not a one size fits all solution. Many people suggest resting and relaxing. Taking a break or mini vacation, or finding a new career path. How does one do that while having to deal with the adult responsibilities that the rest of us have. Some of the younger people that share youtube videos of their journey through getting out of burnout have the luxury of taking time off or not having to pay a mortgage or raise a child. So how does one with these responsibilities just tell their spouse they need to take a break. What does that look like. Who is Ted uninterrupted?
To battle burnout I had to answer this question. My typical hobbies outside of work are still tech and work related things. My passion for Linux and technology is not only a gift/talent but a curse that keeps me in work mode for longer than needed during the day. Many times I try to play video games to relax but even after putting my daughter to bed and turning on my steam deck or xbox I begin to think about more effective ways I can use my time. I still try to play games like Street Fighter but even the new Street Fighter 6 has a new drive gauge with a burnout system that brings me back to the question of who is Ted uninterrupted?
I have decided to find out what that means to me and where I can find the fun and the passion that used to be there. Back in 2018 I was learning about Redis and how to implement redis with docker containers and how to gauge the performance of how much easier that was for developers to use than the mysql ndb clusters that existed. Stuff like that was fun and exciting to me. These days when im learning something new like creating modules in terraform or updating python scripts to work as AWS lambda functions I feel like im RYU with an exhausted drive gauge trying to wait to recover and find the fun. Cloud engineering is a great place to be and my thoughts on Devops and the current culture and state of Devops and Cloud engineering can be read in a future blog post, but for now I need some rest.
In conclusion,
I am still looking to leverage my skills to grow my knowledge and find the right place for me. I didn’t get his far to quit now. Im still actively looking to find a place where Devops Practices are being used properly or where I can share some insight and help teams follow good cultural practices to keep the chains of the SDLC smooth and oiled up like a new car. However, I am also learning in my personal time to create a time for REST and this is how I define it.
- R. relax your mind
- E. examine what you’ve learned
- S. study your surroundings
- T. take time to reboot*