A few months ago, when I took a sick day from work, my boss asked “are you sick or sick of it?”
Knowing his encouragement to take time off would be the same, regardless of my answer, I told the truth. I was sick of it.
Framing things in this light has been a useful tool to consider what’s going on, and to balance my general feelings about things.
I’ve always worried (based on my 2015 experiences) there was a chance I would get sick of it about everything and have to start over in a completely different industry/life/something.
And so I’ve tried to hedge.
I’m really good at what I do. When I’m focused.
Like really good. And when I’m interested in the problem, I’m usually happy.
But I get laser focused and my life (and happiness) gets away from me.
I can sprint like this for a week, sometimes 10 days. Then I need a break from that thing for 1-2 months. Sometimes, if I haven’t finished, I can come back after 2-3 days off.
But burnout returns faster.
So as I’ve done a lot of good in my current job the last few years, I’m tried to hedge against burnout.
I have home projects. (More on that soonish.) Those can be small and large. But I like to do them from start to finish without stopping. So long projects lead to being sick of it.
All of this was leading somewhere….
Right. I’m getting sick of it. It’s building. There are ebbs and flows. But overall it seems to be building. The best way to hedge against it seems to be learning to balance my life and enjoy things along the way, and preparing against a time of need.
I still think I had a different conclusion when I started.
Oh well.