Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
I&#x27;ve been thinking about this a lot since I first heard this story about Feynman.  I&#x27;ve been in this industry now for 25 years and there have been three times when I wanted to quit.  During the first two, in the back of my mind I still knew I wasn&#x27;t going to and shouldn&#x27;t.  I&#x27;m working in an industry doing what I wanted to do since I was ten years old.<p>The third came this time last year.  I had lost a parent (not to due to COVID), my business had failed (also not due to COVID), and then COVID hit so my prospects seemed low for employment.  I found a contract with someone who turned out to be easily one of the most unethical people I had ever worked with.<p>Little of this had to do with technology but, compounded, I found myself in such a deep state of burnout that the thought of picking up my computer made me sick.  I genuinely didn&#x27;t want to work in technology anymore once that contract had ended. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to go back to school for something else or try to get on at Costco.  The problem with going back to school is, I couldn&#x27;t really pinpoint anything I wanted to study so I had all but made my mind up that when things opened back up I was going to put my application in at Costco.  Hard work for lower pay but I have more respect for Costco than I do for a lot of companies in my industry.  At least Costco solves a real problem and is beloved by their customers.  They&#x27;re not pretending to be innocent to fomenting sedition while making a buck off of abusing peoples privacy.<p>Fast-forward to around December and I had found employment back in tech.  This company provides a quality service that directly benefits real people.  I had quite earnestly tried to avoid it, though.  It will go down as the oddest interview I&#x27;ve ever had because I was basically trying to talk them out of hiring me but to their great credit, they did anyway.  Due to the nature of the job, I have a lot of leeway in deciding how to solve problems since I&#x27;m responsible for all of the code.  I needed a simple log server for the various scripts that were running.  I looked at all the Open Source options and found they offered way more than I needed so I decided to write my own.  Almost all of the code I work with is PHP so I started writing it in that.<p>One Friday night after work I thought, &quot;Hm, I wonder how hard it would be to port this to Clojure?&quot; I had a little experience with Clojure from a contract I worked on a year prior while trying to bring some much needed cash into my business at the time.  I could see the power and beauty in it but, still, coming from languages that descended from C, the syntax was foreign enough that it was tough going at first.  I suspect that contract ended because they didn&#x27;t think I was picking it up fast enough for their needs.  I don&#x27;t blame them.<p>Anyway, I found that I had actually picked up enough Clojure during that contract that my fingers started flying across the keyboard porting my log server.  It was... so - much - fun!  I was playing with programming again!  I was exploring and learning and, importantly, being productive and solving a real problem.<p>Now, let&#x27;s not kid ourselves, this log server isn&#x27;t some sexy blockchain-containerized-whatever.   It isn&#x27;t a product that is ever going to be sold for millions of dollars.  It isn&#x27;t going to change the world or disrupt any industries.  It is very simple and pretty much only helps me and one other person at the company.  You know what?  That&#x27;s really great to me.<p>I&#x27;ve learned a lot over the years about burnout but they were really reinforced in a big way last year. It&#x27;s important to step away from the computer and you need to do so frequently.  We get weekends and vacations for a reason. Use them! Get outside when you can.  Get some exercise in whatever ways you enjoy most.  Eat good, healthy food with people you enjoy being around. (social distancing notwithstanding) Have a hobby that is not related to your job.  I love technology and playing with it can be fun like a hobby but the fact is that it&#x27;s not because my livelihood depends on it.<p>So far, 4-5 months later, that log server written in Clojure is still cranking away dutifully.  I get a little smile each day when I check the latest logs to see if anything needs my attention.