How Long Can You Cruise Burnout?
It’s a huge weight on my chest that I just can’t shake off. I can’t breathe. I want to scream. I want to leave everything and live on a remote Island. It’s another panic attack.
The birth of this account resulted in negative feelings boiling inside of me about my current workplace and the high-tech industry in general. I was cruising on the red line of burnout for a while now. Until yesterday happened.
I fell off.
It was natural and I should have seen it coming. I felt it coming, but I kept looking the other way. I can be here just a tad longer. I can survive.
I can’t anymore.
Just like a surfer can ride a wave, I’ve been riding burnout. Each additional task was a small wind pushing me toward the edge of the wave, just barely hanging on. And eventually, another dreaded chore I have to do as part of my job came along.
And this gust of wind didn’t just push me over. It threw me off onto the shore, far away from any sea or surfing board.
The best way to deal with it is to have a backup plan. You either save enough money to quit your job and cool off or just continue the next job. And although I have savings I did not intend to lean on my hard owned saved money.
I am interviewing at other places.
Over my seven years in software development, I’ve accumulated so much experience and knowledge that I can’t drift idly through interviews anymore. And it makes the entire process tedious, tiresome, and hard. I am giving 200% and putting on a mask of an ambitious leading developer who seeks to push forward the company that would just hire him.
And it drains so much energy.
A few years ago I had already realized that software development isn’t my end career. I started exploring my creative endeavors, writing being my all-time favorite best childhood friend. It came from a place of finding myself in a new career, using my current job as a patron.
But it’s insanely taxing.
Having my red-line cruising work drain so much energy off me, I barely have any fuel left for my creativity. So I’ve let go of the gas pedal just a little to accommodate my brain. I’ve attached an oxygen mask and I’ve been in survival mode for a long time now.
Time’s run out.
And now I am writing this, a few hours before I will approach my boss and tell him I’m quitting. It’s the scariest thing in the world and something I have never done before.
But it’s not quitting that is scary.
It’s the fact that I have no backup plan that scares me. For the first time in my life, I am quitting a job without having another one in hand. As a grown-up man with bills to pay and cats to feed it feels like the illogical thing to do.
But mentally it’s the right thing to do.
It’s a point of no return nobody talks about. How long can you take hits and punches until enough is enough? It’s easy to quit right away when you have no bills to pay, but when you’ve already built a life for yourself quitting becomes a hard option.
Without having any next job to hop onto, how much enough is enough?
How long are you going to trade your mental health for security?
For the first time in my life, this is enough for me. And although I feel guilty and irresponsible, mentally I am exhausted.
The only thing I can think about is the period of time after quitting work when the stress that was present in the back of my mind at all times fades away. I forgot how it feels to be relaxed and completely at ease.
What does the future hold?
I have no idea. But I have my luck that has saved me all those years. And I might get accepted to the company I am interviewing at now. And if I don’t, something else will come along the way.
I will stay positive because it is the only way to last.
To answer the question in the title: you never know. Even when I felt I had everything under control an unexpected change can topple over your house of cards. So be true to yourself, and don’t beat yourself up if you’ve reached the point of no return.
The worst thing you can do is deny it until you reach a far worse place of mental breakdown.
And if you liked reading this you can also get into the frame of my mind as a software developer by reading:
