To quote the intro from wikipedia, see if this is familiar:
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Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present.
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And most importantly also from wikipedia "Depressed mood is a normal reaction to certain life events" i.e. things have happened which have caused the fun to disappear. Remember if it depression, it happens to everyone and huge percentage of people reading this would have the same reaction to your situation.
I'm no expert on depression and its probably unwise for me to give any more advise but as far as I'm aware talking is always a start, and anecdotally its worked wonders for me in the past. Even just the process of explaining it someone else can bring perspective to things that seem out of control, the blog post may have already helped with this.
It might be a time for a catch up with a friend or your parents or something.
Or take up a completely different activity. I had a friend that studied psychology and one thing he said that stuck with me was "your mind gets stuck in loops, when you are in a mood you will only have thoughts related to that mood".
So an easy way to break the mental cycle can be do something else that takes your mind off it. I found squash good for this, its so fast, frantic, and full of surprises that for 30 minutes you are in a completely other world, and during that time your mind can relax, or process its outstanding stress.
Your suggestion about taking up another activity is spot on. When you define yourself by your work it is difficult to ever stop thinking about it. I still have problems putting work to the back of my brain when I walk home every night. I've taken up running and plan to take up airsoft in an effort to expand my horizons beyond just "how do I write that next line of code".
Degree qualified, startup fresh out of university with no post-grad work experience, failed startup, making ends meet with freelancing with little hope of rejoining a career track.
Now don't get me wrong, were all beating the Fuck Big Corp drum here, but you can't beat big corp for a relatively stable income and ratable work experience.
That's why my advice to kids is: Get that degree, get some work experience (1 year say), THEN work on that startup. That way, you have a fallback option.
I wonder if the professional burnout has a similar "contagion" aspect. A bunch of us are getting burned out. People who are borderline burned out, see the similar behaviors, mindsets, etc, and cross over the line. And since we're all super-connected and many of us are super-vocal, the effect is magnified.
I see a similar possibility here. Startup scene got big around early last year say, now it's winding down, people are realizing, once again, that it's the hot shot big hits that get the showtime, not the 90%+ who have a failure and ended up wasting a year or more of their prime living on ramen and "bootstrapping". Take a look at the app store for how that works out.
Edited to add: I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. If you disagree with my assertion then by all means leave a comment. Hitting the down arrow and wandering off does us both a disservice.
Its easy to suggest and might come easy to some, but it's way out of reach for most young developers trying to get on the career track. Making a notable contribution to an impactful project requires a lot of time and understanding. Even if a project could use the help, jumping in head first like that is quite daunting.
I've also notced people are having real trouble making decisions that 5 years ago would have been snap ones. It's as if there are a lot of people whose thought processes are being befuddled because they worry that in a few months time the world could be turned on its head.ie confusion arises when decisions made today may need to be revised in the very near future in an unknown way.
Of course I worry about that too, and the last years have been the hardest I have ever known for finding freelance work (yes to pay the bills), but I tell you what, I've completely let go of any hopes of trying to protect myself from any "world crisis" on the basis that if the worst does happen, we'll all suffer equally, and you'll be in the same boat as me.
So give up trying to control it and things will start to look better already. And decisions will be easier too.
Agreed. I don't watch the news anymore (besides industry news) and I'm no longer politically involved. Ignorance is bliss.
You are not burnt out. You are just living in fear. I totally understand. You are going to have to confront a different fear to change this situation: your fear of sticking up for yourself in contract negotiation. Bottom line: if someone owes you money, its your fault. If you don't know if you will get paid, its your fault.
Programmers have the worst burnout potential, because in addition to the unpleasant parts of the job itself, you have to deal with some of the most obnoxious personality types on the planet, and do all your work on a machine that is conspiring to ensure you never get anything done. It's assumed other solitary creative/analytical types are oddballs who take tons of time off to recuperate between projects, but programmers are expected to produce day in and day out. There's also the looming archetypes of the superhuman guy who writes 3D engines in his spare time and the billionaire PHP programmer, making you feel bad about both your abilities and bank balance.
As a general salve, I turn off the internet for days at a time, spend time with friends as much as possible and go to the gym. However, none of that is as effective as not working with bozos, and not working on projects I don't care about.
Once you have that under control I think you're ready for a re-evaluation of being burnt out or not. When I work real hard and don't get paid I feel miserable, when I work real hard and money flows in to my bank account I feel a lot better. Ditto for working really hard and seeing the work discarded or re-done several times. Inefficiencies like that can really get you down as well.
Being burnt out goes quite a bit deeper than this.
In my 7 years since college, I've worked at two tech companies, and I've experienced burnout at both at one time or another.
I'm dealing with it by:
1) managing expectations - people are generally reasonable when they're aware of your work load and can sympathize with your need for leisure time
2) don't be a roadblock, but you can say "NO" more often - when I was younger, I'd chase small wins here and there, but overall it did not impact my external performance metrics much. It would have been more productive if I focused on more impactful changes and leave some smaller tasks for newer team members (and use it as an opportunity to transfer knowledge + teach)
3) there's always more work to do - one more email, one more changelist, one more code blog to read, one more framework to learn, one more person to meet. I have accepted that I cannot possibly exhaust my mental todo list. Anyone out there who says they accomplish 100% of what they want to do is either lying or have a short list.
For the past few years, I've been working alone from home, locked away in my room for the most part, and well lurking on HN.
I feel lifted to see the responses here.
My other problem now is that I have too much work on my plate that I have trouble completing. Previously I naively took on new projects as the older ones seem to be taking forever just to sign off on deliverables.
And honestly, there was the greed factor too - it was nice to receive the deposit to kickoff a new project since I've not been getting a salary for the past few years.
But now they are all coming back at the same time and I'm overwhelmed.
And with my diminishing interest in backend programming, I'm hoping to partner with a backend developer to help me out. Do drop me an email (launchplus@gmail.com) if you are keen.
All in all, I feel really foolish about a lot of the mistakes I made during this freelancing period. I will be joining a VC funded startup for a full-time job after I'm done with my current contracts, hopefully that will put my career back on track.
These days I charge an inflated consulting rate to come off the bench. So far I haven't encountered a client willing to pony up, which is kind of nice since I have my spare time to work on renovating my house and practice my blacksmithing.
I can't help but feel worried for myself. On average I happily work around 60 hours/week, and would probably do more if I didn't stop myself (I do need some sleep, after all). Am I in that "3-4 years" stage? I want to do design the rest of my life, but maybe I'm just shooting myself in the foot.
I graduated 6 years ago back when they hardly taught any web/UI work. I started out in print and at first loved it, but quickly grew to hate it. I learned enough about myself that it was clear that it was time to move on. Then I finally accidentally landed a job at a startup and found what I really loved - UX/UI. Then did that really well, and now I'm on to product design and business.
Long story short, you're pretty likely to have an evolving set of interests and that will allow you to get really good at a number of facets. You should still be doing 60 hours a week or more if you want to be making big leaps forward. Once you get burnt out on working your ass off doing that one thing, you'll find something else really interesting and inspiring. Then go chase that.
There are always new things to learn, so make sure you've got supporting network to chat about your challenges with so that you know you're not alone. A lot of times, there are little things you can do to keep your zeal for life even though what you're hammering on may not be as interesting as it used to be. But when it becomes downright depressing to go to work every day for 1-2 weeks, you better quit.
Get an attorney immediately. I'm not saying you should sue previous clients. If the amounts of money are small, it's not worth it. But in the future, he will save you a lot more money than he costs. Every serious freelancer has one, for exactly the reason you've discovered. Get firm contracts written with unambiguous terms regarding project scope and payment, or you will be dealing with this for a long time.
In my experience, the best clients seem to come from relationships and networking. Clients don't screw people they got from valuable friends and partners. They do, however, screw people who are little more than an email address they got from a Craigslist ad.
Look for more leverage with clients by using networking - also, take the advice others gave and stand up to them with stricter contracts and hourly pricing.
