Approval vending machine

Sun, 15 Jan 2023 06:29:58 GMT

( I need to get an interaction that's been bothering me down )

comments

Burnout Roundup

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 20:59:12 GMT

So 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.

comments

Greenstorm's Journal

Approval vending machine

Burnout Roundup