Burnout today, parental leave tomorrow

My second son will be born in a few days. And I’m doing everything I can to spend as much time with him as possible: Tomorrow is my last day of work before I take four months of parental leave.

Which means this is my last post until October! 😢

And the scary part about the parental leave is that it is unpaid parental leave.

I’m self-employed and the vast majority of my income comes from consulting. I help businesses bring their Rails apps to the app stores with Turbo Native. So if I’m not consulting, well, I’m not making any money.

To meet my income goal regardless, I crammed 12 months of work into 5. As expected, I burned out hard.

I knew this would happen to be honest. I set out to work 2-3x more than usual - how could it not! But even a “planned” burnout is still a burnout. Knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it suck any less.

For me, burnout manifests this weird state of wanting to be on my computer all the time. But when I actually sit down… I can’t do anything. I feel bad about not working but can’t do the work I need to do!

What I want to do when burned out is work harder or more. “Surely I can work through this!” I tell myself. As expected, that never works. And only makes me feel even worse about what I’m not accomplishing.

Since this isn’t my first burnout, I kinda sorta know how to fix it. The only real solution, for me, is to take time off. A week of vacation can sometimes do it. But I usually need something more substantial.

Lucky for me I have four workless months coming up! It’s no vacation, let’s be clear. I’ll be exhausted in other ways with a newborn and toddler in the house. But when I come back in October at least the work-side of my brain will be ready to resume my newsletter, finish my book, and dive back in.

That’s the hope, at least. See you in October! 🙂