DustBowl's journal

[theanimal]

Hey @dustbowl. Are you still traveling? If I remember correctly, you’ve been out of work for just over a year now, have you found any salve for the ennui you’ve experienced?

[dustBowl]

Hey @theanimal, thanks for checking in.

One year on, I'm still struggling with a lot of the same stuff. Having been out of work for a while, I'm hungry to find a project to sink my teeth into, but nothing seems to provide the depth of engagement I'm looking for. Maybe it's just an age thing? I remember when I was I was younger, like a teenager, I could spend months obsessing over whatever topic I was into. E.g when I was in college I got really into music production, and I spent 8+ hours a day for an entire summer learning about it, totally engrossed. Nothing seems to quite do it like that for me any more and I thought maybe it was just due to work burnout, but that dynamic doesn't seem to have changed much a year on...

I will say though, 2023 was a great year from a relationship perspective. I made a lot of new friends and spent time re-connecting with old ones, including an ex-partner who is now current partner again. My relational life is way richer than it was a year ago. And I feel highly motivated to be a good friend and good partner in a way that I don't to be a good 'worker' (work here being defined very broadly to include stuff like projects that I come up with for myself).

So even though "work"-ennui seems to be about the same, I would say overall-life-ennui is lower.

My partner and I both want kids and she's pretty committed to her career, so maybe I'll just end up being a stay-at-home dad, lol.

[AxelHeyst]

Being a kickass stay at home dad could be an awesome gig. That's great to hear relationships are going well.

I doubt the project ennui has much to do with age. For one thing you're still young! For another I'd be surprised if only one year was enough to return anyone to music production obsession level stoke after burnout.

In my experience, the physiological and mental burnout was one thing (which took more than a year for me to feel like I'd gotten over).

Another thing that I'm still very much dealing with is bad habits and cognitive patterns that I'm having to unlearn. YMMV, but for me the work environment taught me to hurry and rush work, go as fast as possible, and as soon as I crossed the threshold of "Yep this is good enough that they probably won't sue us for breach of contractual obligations", it was "pencils down and move on to the next dumpster fire gogogo!" It's still very difficult for me to relax into the curiosity and delight of dropping into productive projects because unlearning this stressbunny relationship with projects takes time and effort. Bit by bit I'm re-attaining my capacity to enjoy projects and to allow myself to care about them. I think you'll be able to re-attain it as well.

[grundomatic]

One year on, I'm still struggling with a lot of the same stuff. Having been out of work for a while, I'm hungry to find a project to sink my teeth into, but nothing seems to provide the depth of engagement I'm looking for. Maybe it's just an age thing? I remember when I was I was younger, like a teenager, I could spend months obsessing over whatever topic I was into. E.g when I was in college I got really into music production, and I spent 8+ hours a day for an entire summer learning about it, totally engrossed. Nothing seems to quite do it like that for me any more and I thought maybe it was just due to work burnout, but that dynamic doesn't seem to have changed much a year on...

I could have wrote this very thing, though I'm older and haven't been off work quite as long. At first I also thought it was being older, but then I moved on to thinking it's because there's no driving need anymore. Before ERE I always had to find another job, so I found something to get interested in. I, too, worry that I'll never find something else that catches my interest like old interests did. People I share this with are much less worried, saying that I'm doing the right thing and that I'll find something once I take the time I need. I guess we'll see who is right--them or us.

[Jean]

Glad to read that some areas are going better.
I'de love to be a stay at home dad, and one big motivation for ere, was to be able to be it without the mother being dedicated to a career:D
I feel the same about getting interested at something. Only video games do that now. They are great because no one will think anything if i quit a game after a few thousand hours invested, me included.

[dustBowl]

Another thing that I'm still very much dealing with is bad habits and cognitive patterns that I'm having to unlearn. YMMV, but for me the work environment taught me to hurry and rush work, go as fast as possible, and as soon as I crossed the threshold of "Yep this is good enough that they probably won't sue us for breach of contractual obligations", it was "pencils down and move on to the next dumpster fire gogogo!" It's still very difficult for me to relax into the curiosity and delight of dropping into productive projects because unlearning this stressbunny relationship with projects takes time and effort. Bit by bit I'm re-attaining my capacity to enjoy projects and to allow myself to care about them. I think you'll be able to re-attain it as well.

I definitely experienced the dynamic you're describing in my professional life, especially at my last job. One of the things I've been doing recently is learning about a bunch of programming topics in a deep way that I never had time for in the context of my job. It's been enjoyable, which I guess is a good sign.

I do notice though that whenever I try to get into a new topic in my own time, I tend to go all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum from what I had to do at work - that is, I have a tendency to read 10 books on subject x, never apply any of what I read, and then get bored and move onto the next thing. Which is also not a great approach.

This train of thought reminds me of a recent conversation we had in MMG2. One piece of advice that came up when I mentioned my struggles to find a freedom-to was to try orienting more towards action than learning. Like, decide something you want to accomplish and then only learn what's strictly necessary to accomplish that goal. Which sounds like it kind of brings us back around to what I used to do at work, but maybe there's a middle ground here. More action-oriented than my default but still with enough time/space for deeper engagement with a topic than I could get at work...

@grundomatic It's nice to know I'm not the only one. I'll be interested to see how your experience evolves as you're away from work for a longer period of time, assuming you decide not to go back.

@Jean what video games have you found the most engaging? Based on our conversations at / after EREfest I remember you like strategy games?

[jacob]

This train of thought reminds me of a recent conversation we had in MMG2. One piece of advice that came up when I mentioned my struggles to find a freedom-to was to try orienting more towards action than learning. Like, decide something you want to accomplish and then only learn what's strictly necessary to accomplish that goal. Which sounds like it kind of brings us back around to what I used to do at work, but maybe there's a middle ground here. More action-oriented than my default but still with enough time/space for deeper engagement with a topic than I could get at work...

Back in my university days, there was a choice between two different learning styles, as offered by traditional universities vis-a-vis the new so-called university centers. The traditional one offered lectures and classes and textbook problems. The centers offered a "project-oriented" approach where people (individuals and teams) spent an entire semester on a project. Back then, the latter was widely agreed to be inferior to the former and I agreed. Now, I'm not so sure. I've come to appreciate the project-oriented approach, both for my phd and postdoc as well as the work I did in finance. Current learning is also incidental to actually finishing a project, see e.g. viewtopic.php?t=12429

The downside of project-oriented learning is that it is rarely "complete". Lacking a formal curriculum, it has the same problem as being self-educated. You don't know what you don't know. However, "reading without doing" w/o a formal curriculum has the same problem.

The hard part about project-oriented learning is coming up with a reasonably sized project. Not too hard, not easy either.

[grundomatic]

On the subject of recovering, this was on the blog roll today:

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/prod ... -eggs.html

[dustBowl]

Current learning is also incidental to actually finishing a project, see e.g. viewtopic.php?t=12429

...

The hard part about project-oriented learning is coming up with a reasonably sized project. Not too hard, not easy either.

How did you feel about the level of learning that came naturally as part of that project? Where did it fall on the [boring and under-stimulating/just right/ too hard and overwhelming] spectrum? It sure seems like a lot viewed from the outside but you got it working in the end so maybe it wasn't that bad?

On the subject of recovering, this was on the blog roll today:

https://earlyretirementextreme.com/prod ... -eggs.html

Thanks for sharing, good food for thought. My past efforts in the maintenance realm have mostly focused on the physical side of things like eating healthy, working out consistently, getting enough sleep, etc. I'm not exactly sure what expansion of my personal system, as described in that article, would look like. It describes expansion as follows: "This does not mean bigger or more, it means better." I'm not sure what exactly it means to make my system (self?) better...

[mathiverse]

A few types of expansion: Increased complexity, increased capacity/slack, increased skills

Examples
Increased complexity -> changing up your lifestyle to provide more incidental exercise, rising to WL6 or beyond in personal finance or other domains, connecting what you already know, connecting more deeply in your social circle somehow
Increased capacity and slack -> exercising to increase performance metrics, making conscious competences unconscious competences, expanding a social circle -- It seems to me that this is the bigger/more category, although it is also "better" if it allows more coordination of other areas.
Increased skills (or competence in known skills) -> moving things from unconscious incompetence toward unconscious competence

I don't think that sentence is perfectly accurate. Early on in some sub-domain, you may be able to expand your system by making something bigger or more, if it is very deficient. If you have no friends or community, making your social circle bigger may expand your system meaningfully. If you are completely sedentary, adding more strength and cardio fitness may expand your system meaningfully. If you know nothing about a subject, reading a book on it may expand your system meaningfully. Etc.

[jacob]

How did you feel about the level of learning that came naturally as part of [ viewtopic.php?t=12429 ]? Where did it fall on the [boring and under-stimulating/just right/ too hard and overwhelming] spectrum? It sure seems like a lot viewed from the outside but you got it working in the end so maybe it wasn't that bad?

Both controllers felt more like engineering projects, that is, a series of small and [mostly independent] problems to be solved. As such it fit very well with the milestone approach. It's worth noting that I already had a foundation in both woodworking, electronics, and "widget-making". I'd consider CCCC to CCCCCC on all those areas, that is, I can calculate, coordinate, and create. In addition, I have almost all the necessary tools in my workshop now as well as many parts. This is like having a larger vocabulary in the solution space. This was not always so.

Conversely, a project like "learning woodworking for the first time" is more like a science project, that is, not even know what questions is ask or where to begin. Being low on the CCCCCC scale (copying and comparing, doing a little compiling) can feel overwhelming with lots of false starts and restarts. For example, I'm currently trying to spec out a ghetto gaming computer based on the Dell Optiplex. No doubt this is not a particular different problem, but there are lots of little snags (experiential knowledge) where I don't know what I don't know. Conversely, once higher up the CCCCCC, all problems/snags can be solved when/if they're encountered.