08 Apr 2020

About the long silence

Hello all!

It's been almost a year since my last post. I guess some explanation is in order. And it's actually very simple.

I got burned out.

I took on too much at once. My daily job. Personal life. This blog. Paid side projects. It was all fun until it wasn't. One night I finished my side project at 3AM, sent the finished code to the guy and went to sleep. Next day I just couldn't wake up and get to work. So, I said to myself, "It's alright, weekend is coming, I'll get some more sleep and everything will be fine again!"

It wasn't.

My brain still refused to work and I could barely function. I stopped answering my emails. Stopped managing the blog. Stopped pretty much everything. Whatever I did, it wasn't fun. And that's how I spent last year or so.

It's slowly getting better. Reversing stuff feels fun again. I might even write a proper blogpost or two in the near future. Who knows..

Now you know it. Take care and try not to end up like me!

Some articles that seemed useful to me:
https://piechowski.io/post/how-to-get-over-burnout/
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/recovering-from-burnout.htm
https://kierantie.com/a/burnout

28 thoughts on “About the long silence

  1. Interestingly it reminds me Tolstoy's my confession book. If you didn't read it yet, I really suggest you to do. I hope you'll get better soon. Bad news, most likely it will happen again.

    • Hi Tufan, and thanks for the suggestion! :) Tolstoy is not exactly my cup of tea. So... maybe someday...

  2. It's easy to get overhelmed by work, personal life, side works, promises you made to friends and your own personal projects (you would like to work on and never find the time). You soon got burnout. It just happens.

    As with PCs rebooting yourself is the only way to make your brain and peripherals work again.
    Of course, with filled memory and slow disks and CPU ... but you're able to re-start.

    I'm glad you're slowly finding again yourself behind 'kao'.
    Keep enjoying what you do but don't let it control you!

    Take care of yourself.

    Best Regards,
    Tony

    • Happened the same thing to me. One day i felt like invalid metadata and i just wanted to stop with everything, and i did. I feel better now, but ,sometimes, (like now) i still open the browser to see if you made a new blogpost :)
      See you soon!

      • Wow, is that really you? I was wondering what happened to you.. :)

        Thanks and enjoy your (new) life!

  3. I wish you a good recovery! Make sure to not take too much on your plate at once again and keep doing the things you actually enjoy, it's easy to forget that sometimes...

  4. Glad to see you online again :).
    Had that once a while ago. This is what happens when you focus on external things without listening to your inner voice. Try listening to it. I also have a little present for you. It helped me through the time, maybe it'll help you, too. Just check it out: {hidden link}.

    Best Regards,
    d00d

  5. Tough times, it sounds very familiar unfortunately. Sometimes you just gotta take a step back and take a break from everything you normally do.

    Good to see you back online again. Take all the time you need to fully reset though; the way back up can still be a slippery slope :)

  6. Good to see you again Kao, I thought to ask you about the absence in tuts4you but I forgot :-)
    God bless you!

  7. Hi, it's nice to have news from you ! I hope you feel better now ! Keep enjoying life. After The Rain, The Fine Weather

  8. Hi kao
    Glad to know you are back, I know what it feels like to go through this, Organize your threads and set their priorities to find the comfortable balance in your life, I also spend my time away from PC recently and I admit it is a good way to reduce stress.

    We all miss your "Angry" posts on tuts4you so don't be away for long :D

  9. Thank you all for the kind words.

    @Kurapica: I feel like I don't have anything to give to tuts4you anymore. Which means that I won't be writing "angry" posts anytime soon...

  10. @kao
    You've always something to share and teach.

    Like @Kurapica wrote, I like the way you sometimes answer on tuts4you: always polite but as "crude" as it needs to be. Once, you replied to me too in that way (but not on tuts4you), ehehehe ... I appreciated it a lot, cause those were the words that I deserved at that time and gave me the will to prove I was (a bit) better than just an asshole, lol :D

    Wish it will come a time you'll feel comfortable again with people like me (= newbies/amateurs).

    Best Regards,
    Tony

  11. This is happening for me since 2015 , I can't finish anything I start .
    I Feel exhausted all time , not because am not eating well , I think it's something within my brain .
    There is always a hundred plan for each day and I cant stick with any of them , Sometimes I feel depressed , Sometimes I feel like am a loser who can't acomplish anything . I tried several fields but 'RE' is something totally diffirent I just love it !
    hoping that one day i'll be able to be a great reverse engineer .
    God bless you brother.

    Best Regards,
    Ding

  12. Hi kao,

    Thanks for sharing your story. That's a brave thing to do, even more when you are highly known person in the community.

    I have been in a similar burnout that have took me some years to recover. We need to be careful, you can be burnout in 3 or 4 months, and take a couple of years to fully recover. So, it's not a one to one relationship between time to burnout and recovery.

    Well, we have to learn from this and protect ourselves not to go again into that hole.

    My advise to all: Listen to the symptoms that your body is sending you...they are pre-burnout signals.

    Thanks!!!

    • Hi Arnold, that's all very true. Listening to your body is important. But unfortunately they don't teach that in schools. ;)

      Take care everyone!

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