Today is the last day of a great 10-day vacation out to Washington DC to visit family — both Daniel’s and my own. We get on a plane tonight to head back to Seattle and I go back to work tomorrow. For the second time in my 15-year career I’m dreading it and I haven’t even sync’d my work email to see how many hundreds of emails are waiting for me.
I’ve been dreading work since last September at the end of my trip to Spain with Jonobie. And that dread has been fairly consistent ever since.
Work has consumed my life. I get up at ~4:30a — 30 minutes before my alarm goes off — and respond to emails from the contractors in India. The plan is to get to the gym by 5:30 for my hour work-out, come home, spend some time with Daniel, and head into the office by 8a. Instead, I skip the gym and spend all morning trying to get caught up with emails and code reviews. I give myself just enough time to shower and eat breakfast and then continue working on the bus ride into the office. I work non-stop, eating lunch at my desk, until 5p when I leave for home. When I get home I’m mentally exhausted and have no energy for much more than eating dinner that Daniel has lovingly cooked, doing the dishes, watching an episode of something, and crashing in bed at 9p.
This is not a life.
Digital Ramblings 
Working less
I know it can be hard to do, but given how much burnout sucks…
Can you just work less? Care a little less about responding to email, etc? Spend an hour less doing work stuff, punt some of it as not critical, or give it to other members of the team?
I wiped myself out pretty bad from from pushing myself on the BSD merge. If I had spent a little less energy on it, I don’t think it would have ended up in a significantly different place.
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Re: Working less
I’m actually working at that. Last week and so far this week I’ve actually made it to the gym in the morning and left work at 5p or even slightly before. The days have still mostly sucked and everything is a firedrill recently, but a dose of apathy has seemed to improve things for the moment.
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