leanstartupnoob

Hi Everyone,

I'm in my late forties and have been (mostly) gainfully employed for my adult life as a software developer. Over the last few years I've suffered some burnout and was part of a mass layoff at my last job. I started seeing a therapist and things have not been going great. I might be projecting a bit, but on multiple sessions my therapist has made it seem like it's my fault for getting laid off.

I'm not quite ready to retire, but I easily have enough cash and savings to last for over a year without too much financial stress. Today during our session the therapist started being really assertive that I should make a schedule and apply for jobs on indeed or monster even though I've said repeatedly that I'm not ready to start looking. I want to be ready to start a new job and succeed rather than flame out after a couple months because I'm still depressed.

I feel like part of the problem is that my therapist isn't used to working with financially healthy and stable people so he thinks I'm on the verge of losing everything if I don't get a job soon.

Has anyone had similar issues in trying to talk with therapists or have a recommendation for someone who is used to working with software professionals?

Background: I've been a software developer for over 20 years. Mainly contracting/consulting roles and I've mainly used my own laptop for about the last 10+ years.

I've found a few tools useful to my own workflow over the years. One of those is a proprietary app with a licensing cost of $150 per seat.

I've now started working with a company of about 800 employees with a company provided laptop. I want to get a license to install my tool on this laptop, but I'm running into resistance. Some developers at the company say there are freeware and open source alternatives, but those options are poorly implemented and missing features after using the proprietary tool.

My immediate manager has only been in management for a few months and didn't have any luck navigating the procurement hierarchy.

Any advice on pushing this to the next level?

I have been talking with some local martial arts studios about building tracking software for their businesses using a SaaS model. As part of the research process I stumbled across this company:

http://www.mindbodyonline.com/ http://www.inc.com/inc5000/profile/mindbody

On one hand I feel like my solution will be a better fit for my customers, but this company provides a very compelling and similar solution that is already built.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you handle talking to customers about the competitor to learn how you could do a better job?