Going through a rough time and burnout

You Can Do This!
1

Hey all, I am a recent out of school graduate college student from Pittsburgh, PA and an online bootcamp graduate. I have been strugging with perfectionism and trying to make the transition after being in school. I have been trying to learn as much as i can about job searching and trying to not get discouraged and been struggling with mental health and going to a therapist. I am also working out on a few days a week basis as well, I have been keeping myself busy with learning alot while i job search. All I want is some support and some opinions. I dont mind criticism if its constructive and you point it out.

The issues I have been having:

coping with loneliness and lack of support in my coding journey. Tried to use meetups, most were at least an hour from where i leave and traffic is discouraging and had a very bad panic attack but wanted to try again when i have a part time job or live closer to downtown Pittsburgh and not Latrobe. So I am working on it.

getting major burnout from job searching and working on projects with a lack of interest for personal goals (Learning java and going through a python game tutorial in a python book from school). I am trying to time myself and set a timer.

job searching for tech (developer or teaching job in cybersecurity, IT, and FSW) and temp job to take care of myself.

I hope you all are doing well and wish the best,
-Chris J.

2

Keep up the hard work! Value will follow!! I like keeping things simple so I try to do something that I’m sure is good for my mind, body, and soul everyday!!! Keeping track off all those good things helps me “quantify” how I’m spending my time wisely!!! :vulcan_salute:

2 Likes
3

Thanks Scott, I really appreciate it. I feel like I have been too hard on myself and have been setting up some unrealistic goals for myself. This is my first time on the FCC forum and i figured since I used the site to learn about cybersecurity, programming, and software development; this would be a good place to try to be active on and reach out. :raised_hand:t2:

I think you are on to something with keeping it simple and doing a nice thing for yourself. I definitely haven’t been keeping track of the good things. I will watch something i find interesting after a hard days work and i have been trying to keep a journal to keep track of goals and things i accomplished.

1 Like
4

Whats up Chris, listen to David Goggins on youtube for motivation. That guy pumps me up. lol

2 Likes
5

HI Chris,

Practicing programming can be tough in the beginning, but it does get easier over time. The big thing that gave me focus and kept me interested in practicing programming was that my side project held my interest. Is there something that you love to do that you can make into your side project?

My favorite thing to do for practicing programming techniques is to build my own logging framework. I’ll start slow by writing a logger that only logs messages out to the console, but later, I keep enhancing the program with other types of loggers that write the logs out to a file or to an http endpoint (Logging can get very sophisticated!)

Job searching is definitely tough and depending your personality, selling yourself can be hard. In addition, it sounds like you have a heavy workload, while trying to balance practicing programming, searching for a tech job and getting a temp job.

With all that, definitely keeping going to the gym to keep yourself healthy! One thing that I’ve found helpful is taking a little bit of time to calm my mind. I would recommend these resources for anyone interested in starting a meditation practice:

Alan Watt’s videos on Zen (he has such great insights):

Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

WorkRave for reminding you to take breaks during the day

  • This is free, but it doesn’t work on phones T_T (that might make an interesting project!)
  • FCC limits new users to only two links per post: if you google workrave, it should pop up as the number one result in google.

In the morning, I try to squeeze in 5-10 minutes to meditate (It calms my mind and keeps it from worrying about what I have to do later today). In the car, on my way to work, I’ll listen to Alan Watts on those days that I’m feeling a little frustrated. Once I arrive, I take another 5 minutes in the parking lot to meditate before going into work (to unruffle from all the driving). Finally, at work, I set up workrave remind me every 2.5 minutes for a 30 second micro break (I close my eyes and breath during these breaks) and every 20 minutes for a 5 minute break (I get up / walk around / go to my car to relax for 5 minutes)

Those breaks give me the opportunity to remind myself not to get caught up in everyone else’s pace and to take care of myself with little moments of calmness and caring.

Hopefully this helps a little bit in some way ^^;

1 Like
6

Nothing much Ricky, recovering from burnout but still learning and getting back into the learning grind and working on myself. I just checked out David Goggins and he is insane, I do agree with what he says about finding your own story and his driven speech. Its good to hear about how other people struggled and work through the odds. We need to hear more stories about defeat and hard times I think.

I appreciate you taking the time to reach out with suggestions. I have been working on a my GitHub account for storing my web and python projects i am proud of and worked on in the schools I went to and in the FCC bootcamp. some of it is like humble beginnings for me and mean a lot to me despite the feeling of imposter syndrome.

7

Hey Mykezero,

I really appreciate you taking the time to reply on my thread. I agree about programming being tough in the beginning when I started 4 years ago in college and found FCC.

I do have alot of interests on the side that I thought I can incorporate into a side project and I am super good at coming up with ideas on the fly. Me personally I love to read and talk about books in the technology field. I like alot of things: video games, soccer, MMA, etc. I also love to teach and build something like an app on like Taoism for example or a blog about cybersecurity and technology news and resources to help with my learning journey and to make content that is meaningful to me and others in my process of learning.

You are definitely right about job searching being tough as I would discover out of college and even in college. I think I gave myself too high expectations of a lot of mind taxing long goals within a short period of a few months. My personality is a mix of introverted and extroverted. I love to help out but I cant take drama or toxic people.

I appreciate the links for zen mediatation and Alan Watt. I have checked out Alan Watt and agree with his message. Your message and the support helps me out in a big way. I like what you mean about not getting caught in everyone’s pace since I’m a perfectionist and I can be hard on myself.

I’ll have to check out WorkRave for sure.

I know a little about logging from my self learning experience. you will have to send me a link of it or/and I will definitely have to do some digging on it. I have worked with Linux and have a basic understanding from my college tenure.

Thanks for real,
Chris J.