During my traditional working career (TPS reports, meetings, action plans, etc...) I would find myself in a low energy state as I entered the parking garage on Monday morning. The jobs was mostly about measuring how long the hamsters were in their wheel, not the rotations or speed, but simply being in the wheel, which favored the lethargic hamsters who would rather die than move. There is no solution to low energy in jobs like this (IMHO), it is the condition of the employment either by design (lethargic people will not look for other jobs) or by happenstance.zbigi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:45 pmThe thing is, I just had a 5 month break from the job, during which the process of exploration returned essentially nothing (BRUTE style). Perhaps I should try harder and for longer - but I'm too scared that, after even a couple years of searching, I'll still come up with nothing, while meantime my money-printing CV will fade into mediocrity and I'll end up far worse off overall. That's the shit side of being a programmer unfortunately - extremely short shelf life of skills. Hence, it makes sense to me to work a while longer ("get it while the getting is good"), esp. since the job right now is ok, all things considered (by my standards, a job is ok if I'm not fantasizing about quitting a couple times per week). If/when it takes a turn for the worse, it might be my cue to switch to part-time.
As for a journal, I'll give it more thought. However, I have a very good friend with whom I talk over a lot of this stuff regularly already (sort of like free therapy - BTW that might a good definition of a real friendship?), so I don't need a journal per se to get my thoughts out (as I am already verbalizing them in those conversations).
The opposite side of this job would be like that of a hot-shot or troubleshooter, who are not even at work, but called on to solve, time dependent problems caused by a variety of different integrated issues. My grandfather, who was not educated, was a "fixer" for the AT&T. When the local, highly educated engineers could not get some aspect of the connections to work, they would call him. His only conditions were to work alone and not bother him until the problem was solved. He was paid a good salary and would sometimes not work for months as there weren't any issues that needed his expertise.
When I have been employed in jobs like the former, I am a very low energy individual which over time affects many aspects of my life (I once was about 10% slower in an activity after 6 months of one of these jobs without any other change in any other variable). Taking breaks from this kind of job will not have any long term impact as most of the time on break is spent dreading the inevitable return. I also suspect some people are expecting too much from their job, it is just a paycheck that allows you to enjoy your life, nothing more. Being "Good" as a job is usually not worth the effort unless it is in one of the few high skewed professions (MLB salary vs minor league baseball players, top 1% hedge fund manager vs median, etc). Putting forth effort to be better than the bottom 25% in most fields does nothing but waste one's time and energy.
A very intelligent friend of mine, when trapped in the hamster jobs, would often experiment how bad he could do the jobs and remain employed. This puts a different spin on the job and allows for some challenge and intrigue.