Tired

This year I managed to write at least one—hopefully interesting—article per month. Now it's August, and I'm tired. Not only physically, but also mentally.

I even tried to start a newsletter as an alternative communication channel, but I haven't written anything for two months now.

It's not the lack of topics, quite the opposite. I have an ever growing list of ideas and drafts. Some of them I wish to finish into something presentable. But I cannot find the energy and motivation right now.

And it's also not only because I think I'm not competent enough to talk about the topics.¹

I have plenty of time, but at the end of the day I am so exhausted and drained, I only can do activities which do not require a lot of activity from my side. I binge-watch a lot, mostly series. I flee from the reality.

And I couldn't tell you what is causality and what correlation. What's the reason, and what's the effect.

Is it really just the pandemic? Or has it only revealed or amplified what was already there?

Is it only seasonal? Will it last? I don't know.

It's not even like "typical" depressive episodes where everything is dark and gloomy. I'm really just low on everything. While everything does seem meaningless, I just sit there and think »I don't even care.«

Last year around this time I did a three months sabbatical. Today I would say, it was way too short. If I had planned it better (and oh boy am I bad at planning anything in my life), I should have taken a year off. So today would be my last day of a hypothetical one year long sabbatical.

Would it have changed something? I cannot tell.

I don't even know if I still love my job. Not that you need to "love" it, not hating it would be sufficient perhaps. But sometimes I wish I could time travel back 10 years ago, when all was new and shiny, and my biggest concern being if I can code that thing somehow.

Today I open my editor either only for a personal pet project (which I also seem to abandon now more quickly, and most of them don't even see the light of the world). Or to quickly check out someone else's pull request (PR) for local testing. I read a lot of code though. And review PRs. And faciliate, organise, manage. I am glue.²

Last year I had a great mentorship pairing, we enjoyed our exchanges. I learned as much as she did. I miss that.

I also miss not only coding, but also research and discovery. Time to throw around ideas and proof of concepts. I miss whiteboards.

Most of all I miss my energy, motivation, drive.

I could ramble a lot more here.

But I'm just too tired.