All things come to an end. In some ways, it is reassuring to know that there are a few constants in the world, even if the constants tend not to look like the kinds of things that we might expect. I’ve come to the realization over the last couple of weeks that our trip has changed for me. I no longer feel like I’m just taking a break, or living in a permanent state of vacation. Instead, I’ve begun to crave a certain structure that I have decidedly not wanted up until this point.
Part of my desire for more structure has come about because we are settled in San Marcos la Laguna for the next two months (we’ve been back for a month as of this writing), rather than being completely consumed by travel as we were in Mexico, where we visited something like 8 different towns in 3 weeks.
Another reason I’ve been craving more structure is that I’ve actually started to think seriously about the future. Much to my dismay, the money I saved for this trip will not last forever. At some point, we have to do something to earn some money again, unless we decide to become full-time vagabonds, which I frankly can’t imagine. So, the question is: “who the hell do I want to be when I grow up?”
When we started this trip I was quite seriously burnt out with work, and my increasingly stressful roles in large corporations. I was having trouble imagining any kind of future working with technology, or anything else really. While I still don’t want to go back to working 60+ hour work weeks (who does?) I have to admit I am starting to miss some aspects of my former work.
For those who don’t know me, I spent the last 25 years working as a software engineer, and engineering leader. I loved the challenges and puzzles of writing software to solve business problems. I found it fun to learn new things about software, and find ways to use what I learned to the benefit of my employers. Over time, I started to really enjoy sharing what I had learned with others. In the last 5 years, I can categorically say that my favorite working moments were spent sitting with other engineers and helping them to learn programming and engineering concepts. Watching understanding dawn in another person was incredibly rewarding. Not only did I enjoy seeing the growth in other people, but I found the challenge of teaching to be a fantastic way to deepen my own understanding of these topics.
However, somewhere in that same period of time I found myself doing less and less of what I actually loved, and spending more and more time arguing with people about budgets and priorities. While I don’t doubt that some people find this type of work engaging, I do not. I suspect this contributed directly to my increasing burn out. I already wrote about my experience of burnout in another post, and I don’t want to spend more time on it today, so let’s move on.
I started this post by saying that I’ve been craving more structure, so let me tell you what that means for me today.
Most mornings I wake up some time between 6am and 7am. I spend the first couple hours of the day reading something thought provoking, currently “The Dawn of Everything”, and taking breaks every 10, or 15, minutes to do sets of pushups and squats. When I finish my reading, I go to Arati, my favorite coffee shop in town. I get breakfast and coffee, then I spend the next several hours “working”. Work these days means one of several things for me. I might spend time writing a blog post or journaling, doing research on various technologies that interest me, doing programming exercises, reviewing job opportunities to get a sense of what might interest me in the coming months/years, reconnecting with people in my business network, or on occasion chatting with people in the coffee shop about what they are doing. All of this serves the purpose of exploring how I would like to live in future. Spoiler alert: I haven’t come to any conclusions as of yet.
I generally finish my morning by doing a bit of shopping for groceries or anything else we might need at the apartment, and then head back home to spend the afternoon in an even less structured sort of way. In the afternoons, I spend my time playing the mandolin, practicing Spanish on Duolingo, reading/listening to novels, or hanging out with Farrah.
I appreciate that, to many of you, this may not sound like a lot of structure, and in some ways it isn’t. I can only say that it’s a much more concrete flow for my day than we had in the height of our travels when I would wake up and do something different every day. Often that meant traveling to some new place, or visiting a sight of interest. However, it also meant getting up and being completely aimless, with only very loose intentions for the day. This was wonderful at first, and I can’t stress enough how necessary a long period of relaxation was for me when we started our trip. I’m just not the kind of person who can feel good doing little or nothing everyday. I generally enjoy the sense of accomplishment I have when I can look back at my day and say to myself, “look at all the things you did”. Perhaps that is some kind of programming inherent in the society I grew up in, or perhaps it’s some kind of personal trait. I really couldn’t say, nor do I think it matters. Like most people, I want to feel satisfied with how I am living, and today, this is what is working for me. Are there intentional ways you choose to live? Or do you simply jump from one “necessary” thing to the next? If you feel like you are in the latter situation, and you happen to be like me, you might be closer to burnout than you think. Or I might not know what I’m talking about.
I’m sure I will write more about what I am thinking and doing to ensure that in future I am living in a way that is really fulfilling to me. This is just what I am thinking and doing today.
Happy Wednesday!