h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I really, really miss the days when all it took to make me happy, at least temporarily, was a cup of coffee, or a good kiss, or a good movie for that matter.

Now everything's so complicated. I'm tired, really, down to the bone and every thought and impulse, saturated with tired. I'm confused as to what to do about much of anything. I can actually feel the pressure on my blood stream, always. I want a day off. A real one, where I don't code anything, where I don't think about coding, dream about coding, talk about coding. Where I'm not waken from sleep every 30 minutes by the feeling of guilt that I'm sleeping, not working. I don't want to go to sleep thinking about a code problem, or wake up thinking about a code problem. I want a day without meetings or conference calls or bug reports. This is like the reverse of being in love. I'm obsessed with problems I can't seem to solve.

They're depending on me and I'm scared that I'm going to fail. Or that I'm going to succeed and they're just going to depend more, make the deadlines more painful. That six months from now I'll still be working six day weeks physically and seven day weeks mentally. I'm weak. It's only been eight or so months and I'm already buckling, burning out, irritable, bitter. Almost everyone else seems to be doing fine. Either they're faking it or there's something fundamentally wrong with me, or at least with me being there.

I was supposed to learn lingo today. As you can probably tell, I didn't make as much progress as I wanted to.

I think I'm going to go get some sleep.

They're faking it. Trust me.

*hug*

Hey.

I know you have no idea who I am (I only returned to h2g2 for the first time in 17 months today), but I thought, upon coming across this in my meanderings, that I wanted to show some support.

You are not alone. (And yes, they're faking it).

And I've just come across this picture for the first time, and it made me break out in a big grin, so I thought what the heck:

ATB,
Matthew

I really hate the stupidity of young companies, no sensible company would allow their workforce to burn themselves out working 6 day weeks, they didn't employ you in the first place to work 6 days a week so why should you? With only one day off you don't get enough time to recover, if you got the full 2 days you'd be far more productive and happy when you came back into work on a monday morning.

I'd suggest having a word with your bosses about this, but as that could be a scary prospect, talk to your workmates about what they think about the six day thing, I'm sure they agree with you, and then perhaps suggest that you all team up and take this to your bosses together.

You said they're depending on you, well that's a good thing, because they wouldn't like it if you make yourself ill from working too much leaving them with no one to do your job.

Good luck and big hugs Kate sweetie. Remember you could always come and work in england and we have 4 weeks holiday a year and 5 day weeks

but 8 months is really very long , already. i' ve been doing this for 6 months, 80-hour-weeks. the people i've been working together with became really good friends and we stayed together having a drink after 16 hours of work just because there were so many personal tensions that had to be disussed as these friendships were important and the job was very stressy. there was no time at all to talk that out, there.
actually it was only because i liked the others so much that i was putting myself so much into it. after 6 month the two main owners of this magazine couldn't agree about some finance stuff and so the whole thing was stopped. it took 4 weeks to get back to my sources. it is so easy to loose touch to things. and working that much makes it hard to stay sensible.
i didn't feel bad when we went unemployed. i wasn't able to quit this job and leave the others 'alone'. though we were paid well, we did it because we did it together. they are still good friends. and it was easy to find a new job.