fyr.io

I haven't published here in a while, nor made much in the way of changes. I've got a post or three living in purgatory - a long overdue scraps update (thank any and all dieties that Scrolls has returned with vigor), a failed but-still-interesting bug bounty to write up, and a secondary continuation of my quick research into the (lack of) quality of school email setups - and a few others drafted or planned out, but honestly? I've been too busy. I don't often get overly personal here, but heck let's get all human up in this web and give it a go.

Shellsharks recently wrote an amazing piece on burnout - I've been there, brother - and it inspired pushed motivated me to expend some effort here on this post, as I've missed this site dearly. I am not suffering from active burnout right now, but I can feel the creeping edge of it setting in. Recognising it is half the battle, and I'm expecting that doing the web equivalent of touching grass (read: poking about in HTML land) will help realign myself somewhat, giving me a little extra ammo to fight it off.

But why am I recognising the early signs of burnout? It's several things, as is often the case! Allow me to go through the reasons (whilst listening to one of my favourite bands to ever grace my ear holes) mostly for my own benefit!

Late last year I became aware of significant organisational changes that were going to occur at my workplace - changes that are the equivalent of our organisation being bought out. The reasons for this needing to happen are understandable yet frustrating, as to me they could have been avoidable. However I'm basing that off of limited information, and the reality of the situation is never as clean and clear cut as it ought to be. With everything happening around that at the time, the worry and concern about the uncertainty of the future added a very particular pressure on to all of us there.

Following this, a more immediate financial issue reared its ugly head, and presented in the only way it can in the situation we all found ourselves in: redundancies. It became clear to me that something was afoot, and that quickly evolved into the knowledge that, yes, there would be redundancies in the future. This was a difficult time as we were all working hard to keep everything moving forward with the buyout. We didn't back away, throw our hands in the air or give up. We knuckled down. We committed. We guaranteed that this would be the smoothest buyout they have or would ever experience (at least, from a technology perspective!) We provided data, we realigned our objectives, and we were actually motivated to do this. We committed what little budget we had to certain technology and software solutions at their request (though it was more like a demand, but okay, we want to help both orgs) and hit the ground running preparing the environments we maintain for the transition. During this, the redundancies began, and we have so far, at the time of writing, not had any in the department. I don't think this is because we're doing this work, but because we're literally running a skeleton crew already, and have been for half a decade.

The concern was still ever present and at the forefront of my mind throughout this time. Accommodating a very likely and very different future whilst also trying to keep on top of everything else was certainly a challenge. Doing it all whilst having some pretty severe financial anxiety plagueing me literally 24/7 since December - a viciously expensive month in any year - was not a walk in the park. I have always had an overbearing financial anxiety, it comes in waves, and these last few months I've been submerged. Because it's a frequent occurence for me, I have some methods of managing it. I maintain a (way over-engineered) budget spreadsheet and track everything, I try to keep a healthy emergency-fund, I read and play videogames to both distract and relax, and, most importantly, I have access to the worlds most perfect humans in the form of my wife and my son. She is my rock, my safe place, and my shoulder-shaker, bringing me back to the present instead of living in the worst future I can imagine. I adore her. And my son? He is everything.

Now we get to last week. What a blur these last two weeks have been. At the start of the week, our boss (we're a team of four - me, doing sysadmin stuff, two techies, and the boss, who does the managing, project planning and so on) handed in his notice. He resigned, effective Friday that same week. There's no grievance there - in his position I would have likely done the same. An opportunity came along that he had wanted to do for a while and therefore couldn't say no to, and he took it. I respect him an equal amount now as I did back then and before this happened. There's no hard feelings, we're still in contact, we play videogames socially, it's all good and he made the right call...

...but wow. These things have ways of happening at the worst time. Not only are we about to begin the biggest data and platform migration we have ever done (I literally started getting the migration tools configured on his last day, ready for this coming week) but we're doing the same migration across six different organisations all at the same time. So, I'm doing my solo sysadmin across six orgs, all of my bosses project planning and day to day work, budgeting, all of the migrations and acting as the escalation point for issues the two techs can't solve. Oh, speaking of the two techs, they're worth their weight in gold. They stepped up before with the news of this buyout, but they've somehow found the energy to cover so much of my stuff this week. I want to promote them, pay them more, reward them somehow. But given... everything... I can't see anything like that happening any time soon. I will buy them food, I will be overwhelmingly vocal when I praise them, and will do anything I can to support them. I would be drowning if not for them.

So that was the situation last Friday. This Monday, we found out the org doing the buyout have changed their minds at the 11th hour. They're not going ahead. Why? Only they know. But this decision has left us mid-transition with zero support. What this means for... well, everything, is anyones guess. All we know is the massive negative emotional impact it's had on everyone involved on our end. We're reeling, and will be for a long time. The consequences of this will be felt for years to come. The migrations must continue as planned, as contracts have been signed, so there's no less work. Just way more uncertainty.

So this week I have been stretched, pulled, squashed, pushed, thrown and trampled, all after three months of steadily building pressure and uncertainty. It's a lot. I'm okay though. I've learned a lot since my last bout of burnout, and I'm managing myself really well, all things considered. The financial anxiety is back, the stress, the worry and concern for colleagues and friends. Yeah. It's a lot. I'm dropping what can be dropped, I'm delegating what doesn't need me (hopefully sensibly, without adding too much pressure on others!) and triaging the stuff I do need to do as best I can. It helps. What also helps is seeing that all this stuff we're trying to accomplish... is actually working! We've had bumps in the road, but you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and say it: We do good work. We're good at this stuff. We're pulling it off. It's good to take a look at the accomplishments and successes and remind ourselves of how far things have come despite it all.

Throughout all this, there has been some positive stuff!

You may have noticed, if you have been here before, that I have a soft spot for the 32-bit cafe - a community of web weavers, bloggers, digital gardeners and sharers of joy and knowledge. Back in December I made an off-hand comment about helping them out a bit, and xandra asked if I wanted to help out with their infrastructure in an official capacity! I was, and am still to this day, both honoured and bemused (because who am I but some lacky imposter, right?!) and have become even closer to the team of brilliant barista's that make the 32-bit cafe what it is - a kind, friendly community of people who care about the web and each other. It has legitimately become my third place.

I have plans for the 32-bit cafe. Many plans, many ideas. But with everything going on in my workplace I've found myself getting frustrated that I can't commit enough time and resources to this community as I had originally planned and hoped for. There has been some progress though - I have set up a Jitsi server for the webweaving workshops and have begun documenting their infra as it stands (for myself as a way to learn it all) but my input has been frustratingly limited thus far. <gallows-humour>But hey, if I am made redundant in the future I'll have way more time to commit to the cafe!!</gallows-humour>

Guild Wars 1 has had a bit of a revival with the Reforged updates. Over the years since playing it back in 2007 I have found myself dropping into pre-searing to see what's going on, get cozy and nostalgic before heading elsewhere in life, and this rebranded patching thing they're doing has generated interest in a few people I know (one of which is the boss I mentioned above.) As a result, we now have a guild wars playing session every Tuesday evening. It's only for an hour or two, enough to chip away at a few quests, but it's really nice. We're planning on doing the Prophecies campaign at least, hitting the missions when we're all online or side quests when one or two of us are unavailable.

This weekend just gone, we increased our pet count by two by adopting two amazing cats from a rescue place about an hour away from here. I owe cat tax, yes yes I know. I'll get to it! They're the cutest little guys I've ever had the pleasure of knowing and have settled in to our home incredibly quickly.

The final thing I want to talk about, the final positive thing, is something that is sweeping particular group of brown coat wearing people by storm at the moment. When describing the above negative things to someone earlier today, I said something like all this shit stuff that's going on is like... it's like I'm a campfire, and I've had a bucket of water thrown over me - the flames are being exstinguished. But... swipe away at the wet ashes and there's a glowing ember in there. That glowing ember? It's whatever the hell is happening with Firefly right now! I love Firefly, and Nathan Fillion is hinting at something happening. To be announced this Sunday. I haven't been hyped for anything for years.

I am hyped for this. So hyped. I only finished watching the show again a couple months ago, too!

Shellsharks' recent post on burnout made me write this. I went into it writing it to post it online, then I decided I didn't want to post it online, but kept writing it for myself. Now it's written and I've read it back, it's going online.

So there we have it. Busy, tumultuous and anxiety-laden times. But also, good times. Hopeful times. I am not my job or my salary. I am my family. My family keeps me sane when I need it, and keeps me happy always. Firefly gives me excitement and hype. And the web we inhabit, the web we humans build, and the communities we foster give me connection. Those of us that aren't LLMs are humans with human problems, and the world certainly has a lot of problems right now that I haven't even touched on. Remember the human out there, as well as yourself. I don't think you can fight or fix or prevent burnout by doing more stuff, I think doing less of the things you aren't enjoying can help a whole lot, and allow you to find some stability again. I look forward to doing less in the future, whenever that may be!

Stay shiny, folks.

And Mike? Thanks for posting. Thanks for your email, for Scrolls and everything else you do. I see you. Fistbump.