Still climbing out of an emotional pit
Turns out I’ve been in a deep emotional hole for a while now. But I only realized and accepted that maybe few weeks ago.
I would not surprise anyone if I say: “I had too much recently”. Feels like everyone does, it just the stuff is different. But there is always level when I can stay at the surface until it is too much.
Last October I tried to challenge myself as Head of Engineering in a small company. Title for sure sounds big, but in general it was a software development company with about 15 people in engineering. My goal was to come, analyze what is wrong and fix management processes, technical stuff and shift the team’s direction into finally releasing stuff. Before I was an Engineering manager in different companies, always hands on, with some exposure to high-level management challenges. But that was the time when I should have had be fully responsible for everything. So I tried.
Without too much details I could say that right around the time I started to stabilize the team - our small company got merged into one of it’s parent companies.
My roles shifted to, what is called here, “Development Lead” of a product. I have some direct reports, for some people I function as functional manager, and also should be responsible for overall product architecture. But, the shift in freedom and responsibility was drastic. Also, the new company is much more corporate for it’s own reasons. It does not mean it is bad, the company operates in regulated industry, which applies many different restrictions and processes as well.
I thought I don’t care about the merge as long as I keep my job. Which is, honestly, a good situation in current Tech market, don’t get me wrong.
But, it combined together with other personal stuff. My child since the birth has very fragile sleep and around the same time with merging a company we hit another wave of sleepless, disturbed nights. In combination with almost 2 months of different sickness and inability to do anything else - I guess this is when it hit me hard finally and the crack happened.
I did my work, I did all the duties I suppose to do. The only thing that still gave me strengths was my kid and my wife. Interesting that on one hand being a parent could be really challenging and power demanding, but at the same time rewarding to keep you sane.
I believe the whole March was the lowest point in the hole I have been for the past several years. Past years was not easy personally and work-wise. I experienced burnout before few times and kinda know already the symptoms. But this time it went differently and I did not expect that.
I have the problem of demanding too much of my work. I know all of the “you’re not your work”, etc. Sure, it is true. But I would still prefer to like what I do and where I do that. I dedicate to the job 40-50 hours per week. That is a lot of time. It’s like 2160 hours per year on average. Does not sound appealing to spend that time hating what you do.
So, doing my job usually gave me strength as well to move on and deal with different personal challenges. And when it’s not - just makes it harder.
If you still read there are 2 possibilities: you related to the beginning very much or you just know me personally already. I appreciate your interest and your support.
I believe around end of March I realized I must do something with it, it cannot go further that way. Kid’s sleep goes better and worse, I am not going to change job any time soon, so I must do something to adapt.
First, I managed to schedule an appointment to talk to a specialist who could help. Trying to do that in Germany using public insurance is really hard. But I found after few weeks of search. Unfortunately, it is in a few months. At least it gave me a sense like something finally shifted. I have some questions in my head I might need a help to answer.
Second, I reviewed my weekly schedule including work and all personal things and found 2 times slot per week for a gym. I used to go to gym and I liked that. It’s not like I was a powerlifter, but the process of exercising helped. So, I found the closest gym possible to my kid’s kindergarten and started to go. I drive my kid, then like 4 minutes and I am at gym.
Also, trying to add at least 10 minutes of morning stretching as daily routine. I had troubles to find time for it before, but now I do that at days without gym after I drive my kid to kindergarten. What I realized - if I grab this 10-15 minutes and start working a bit later - nothing will happen at work. Really. Most of the people start working later than I am anyway. There is no point to abandon my health for additional 15 minutes of work. On a long run that is a bad trait.
And last, but definitely not least - we started to work with children somnologist. First week was even worse, but right now it seems shifting to more predictable sleeping schedule, which gives us more time to recover.
Actually, there are 2 more things.
One: my solo project to build a keyboard driven photo editor. I do enjoy working with multimedia and I wanted to try to build something myself. For myself. Even if I will be the only person to use that. The biggest mistake was to vibe-code first prototype with unknown technology stack for me. It should have been one or the other. Now, it took me a lot of efforts and time to slowly, painfully unwire the code into something I can work with. Website is here:
There is still an old version that could be run on the web, but next is going to be desktop only with new features
Two: I am working on changing what I think about my current job. Yes, it is not what I have signed for. I cannot call it a bad place, it is just very much different. My ex-colleague suggested this: if there is something to learn from - than it’s the main thing I can take from it. While there are organizational things I don’t like at all - there are things I can get from it as well. So the goal is: show up, do my best and learn. In any case all my next companies and projects always benefited from my past experience. And my experience is not common for Tech, I did not work on common projects most of the time, they all were somehow not mainstream.
Will it help? I have no idea. I might again fall into the pit for a few months. No one knows. I cannot control everything and life tend to send new challenges on a monthly basis.
But, in order to have something different I should do something differently.
Best,
Roman
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