Burnout Roundup
Mar. 25th, 2022 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormSo because I'm 40 years old I have some information about burnout across my life. Obviously(?) I've worked for pretty much all the last two decades without more than a couple weeks off at most. Why am I having so many issues now?
School was the start of this - university particularly. When I did night & weekend classes at the tech institute for two years while working during the day it was a stretch, I was exhausted, but my energy didn't grind down into nothing like this. When I took university classes and stopped working because I was feeling too exhausted, I just kept feeling more and more awful and burnt out.
The character of my work has altered a lot over the years. Landscaping seasonally I'd sometimes be working two part-time jobs in spring/summer/fall with the odd day in winter and some stopgaps in there; my hours and the type of work I was doing changed with weather and season and what gigs my employer came up with. I did not burn out on that. Indoor landscaping was more of a routine, same accounts every week but with different needs as the seasons progressed. That was ok but I did eventually get to that crispy can't-stand-work avoidance feeling; when I took over the outdoors for those employers it was pretty good because I had the backbone of some indoor accounts and the flux of outdoor work. I also got to plan my time with the indoor landscaping guys, and that worked well for me: I did the work, I submitted a timesheet. I got to think a lot about plants, which was great for my brain. The manual labour component was excellent because I was either thinking about plants for work, or I had my mind free to think about what I wanted.
My two year-round full-time salaried jobs to date have been the industry job up here and my current gov job. The industry job was a lot of work and a lot of hours. I ended up with a work cellphone with the understanding that contractors would sometimes call me on Saturday evening or whatever and I'd need to answer. I worked pretty late some days. I could come in late afterwards. My project was my own and I had mentorship from two people who were very enthusiastic about not just doing it but about the details. I worked with a bunch of people who were all different from each other and accepted difference from each other, so there was no normative society.
The gov job, where I am now... on paper is a plum one. It's low-hours on paper and can be done that way-- but, the way it's low-hours means I need to choose to be inefficient at how I do the work in order to have a low-hours job. My day is 7.78 hours long; sometimes to drive to the field takes 5-6 hours round trip. A reasonable work schedule would support going out there, doing the work over a longer day, then coming back and taking a shorter day later. The way it's set up now, I eat the extra time. In fact, the way time is managed is ridiculous, it's union-based factory hours with two fifteen minute breaks and a lunch hour that's not to be moved despite most of my work being mind-work. I have two projects I manage that are actually pretty neat in a lot of ways but they're pretty much completely unsupported: there's a legal requirements manual for both of them, but there's no one who's enthusiastic about it and willing to chat with a newbie. If I had more expertise I could join a working group and pick up knowledge there, but I don't. There's funding support for remote training but not really in-person training. I can straight-up shadow someone who does this work, which might be my solution, but it feels pretty weird doing so.
The gov job and uni are where I'm most burnt out. Both I experience as arbitrary demands. School didn't want me to learn (well, the instructors did, but), it wanted me to set numerical targets as a goal rather than the learning. There was a ton of bureaucracy - I spent more time at uni in administration than I did in any class. Gov is obv-
-you know, this is the second time I've run right out of energy while typing this up. Maybe it can stand like this.
School was the start of this - university particularly. When I did night & weekend classes at the tech institute for two years while working during the day it was a stretch, I was exhausted, but my energy didn't grind down into nothing like this. When I took university classes and stopped working because I was feeling too exhausted, I just kept feeling more and more awful and burnt out.
The character of my work has altered a lot over the years. Landscaping seasonally I'd sometimes be working two part-time jobs in spring/summer/fall with the odd day in winter and some stopgaps in there; my hours and the type of work I was doing changed with weather and season and what gigs my employer came up with. I did not burn out on that. Indoor landscaping was more of a routine, same accounts every week but with different needs as the seasons progressed. That was ok but I did eventually get to that crispy can't-stand-work avoidance feeling; when I took over the outdoors for those employers it was pretty good because I had the backbone of some indoor accounts and the flux of outdoor work. I also got to plan my time with the indoor landscaping guys, and that worked well for me: I did the work, I submitted a timesheet. I got to think a lot about plants, which was great for my brain. The manual labour component was excellent because I was either thinking about plants for work, or I had my mind free to think about what I wanted.
My two year-round full-time salaried jobs to date have been the industry job up here and my current gov job. The industry job was a lot of work and a lot of hours. I ended up with a work cellphone with the understanding that contractors would sometimes call me on Saturday evening or whatever and I'd need to answer. I worked pretty late some days. I could come in late afterwards. My project was my own and I had mentorship from two people who were very enthusiastic about not just doing it but about the details. I worked with a bunch of people who were all different from each other and accepted difference from each other, so there was no normative society.
The gov job, where I am now... on paper is a plum one. It's low-hours on paper and can be done that way-- but, the way it's low-hours means I need to choose to be inefficient at how I do the work in order to have a low-hours job. My day is 7.78 hours long; sometimes to drive to the field takes 5-6 hours round trip. A reasonable work schedule would support going out there, doing the work over a longer day, then coming back and taking a shorter day later. The way it's set up now, I eat the extra time. In fact, the way time is managed is ridiculous, it's union-based factory hours with two fifteen minute breaks and a lunch hour that's not to be moved despite most of my work being mind-work. I have two projects I manage that are actually pretty neat in a lot of ways but they're pretty much completely unsupported: there's a legal requirements manual for both of them, but there's no one who's enthusiastic about it and willing to chat with a newbie. If I had more expertise I could join a working group and pick up knowledge there, but I don't. There's funding support for remote training but not really in-person training. I can straight-up shadow someone who does this work, which might be my solution, but it feels pretty weird doing so.
The gov job and uni are where I'm most burnt out. Both I experience as arbitrary demands. School didn't want me to learn (well, the instructors did, but), it wanted me to set numerical targets as a goal rather than the learning. There was a ton of bureaucracy - I spent more time at uni in administration than I did in any class. Gov is obv-
-you know, this is the second time I've run right out of energy while typing this up. Maybe it can stand like this.
