hnthrowaway1982

15 anni fadiscuss

A vacation does sound nice but I can't figure out how to do it. I guess I just need to learn to put it down, walk away. For me, there's such an incredible backlog of work that I can't seem to put it down. My wife calls me a workaholic... That could be the core issue.

hnthrowaway1982

15 anni fadiscuss

I'm glad to read this. My experience is pretty terrible at the moment. I'm not at the burnout phase, but maybe it's taking longer and will consequently be a more spectacular breakdown. I feel myself getting to closer to the edge every day.

My life situation: I have a full time day job at a small business of 18 employees as their IT director. I fight fires all day and help them dig out of constant deadline pressures. Oh, and I have my own responsibilities and we have 'initiatives' that we're accountable to which are supposed to be outside of work.

It's been too much for awhile - nearly 2 years. A year ago I started diversifying so I had something to fall back on. I took on a large side project where I'm the sole developer. It was with a longtime moonlighting client of mine who has high expectations of quality and time. I would love to subcontract the development but I'm afraid that it will take more of my time to get started and the cost/quality won't be high enough.

I wake up at 5am, do my moonlighting until about 7am. Help get my 8month old ready for the day and off to daycare. I then still can maintain a workout (30 minutes a day 6 days a week for 5 years straight), and then get to my day job. I'm there until about 6, come home spend a few hour with my daughter and wife and then feel compelled to dig out of the 20 emails I get from my coworkers while I'm disconnected. After that I try to make progress on my moonlighting gig until about 10pm.

My weekends are the same way.

Is this a good way to live? No.

I fool myself into thinking that it's just one more project or one more deadline then the pressure is off. Another one immediately follows. Occasionally, I'll slip into needing to have a few beers while working to take the edge off - to just get through it. Also not good. I'm probably developing some form of RSI because my pinkies and wrist hurt as I type this.

So, I'm suffering. On the other side, my wife just quit her job, we're renting in a new city with a house for sale (mortgage already paid off though) in another. We have at least 60 months of savings and another 40 if/when the house sells. Need insurance though so I can't quit and have no idea what it would take to self-insure. Also, don't want to eat away at that rainy day fund now that I have a daughter to take care of.

What's the solution? I tell myself I'll finish up this side project and that'll be it. I'll try to reduce my hours at work. Hopefully I can get back to a normal life - if I even know what normal is any more...

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