When I started writing this blog, last time, I started it with this phrase : “At this point I am unable to make any progress by writing any line of code in my projects. Clearly, because I have a burn-out because of the amount of stress, anxiety, and even depression I have been through.”

Now I can tell that I am making some progressive paces, not big ones, but at least I am working on 2 separate projects, and learning VueJs ( using tuto, practicing tools more and trying to write more codes by solving issues with it). Arriving at this point means that many stations were to be taken.

I took this chance to talk about things that change my perspective towards my field of expertise, which is computer science. I reckon that everyone in this field would have been to the same station.

For you dear reader, who is my colleague (in the same field), I hope you enjoy my story. If you are a new colleague (new to the field) I hope you learn something from my mistakes.

TO BEGIN WITH

You may be wondering who I am, and why am I talking about burn-out. It was actually a long journey which started about 4 and half years ago. It was a journey with computer science, more specifically, coding. In my country, girls are stereotyped to be bad in computer science.

As a survivor, this was never an issue for me. Though, i grew to think that the sex doesn’t matter, this field actually requires more efforts.

I chose this field because I enrolled in a school, after a non successful year in university, in which I was literally screwed up to the point that I couldn’t bear it; I quitted and Thanks to a friend, I was motivated to enroll in the program . Besides, I am more into practice than just theory, so I took my chance.

I started from point zero, not knowing anything at all, though I have always been a great warrior fighting to get a place among my classmates and looking forward to learning new things. With time, my passion toward Technology and developing applications got bigger and bigger.

Things were okay and good at first. I was, for sure, struggling, but not too much owing to the fact that things turned out to be good at the end.

2 years later, I needed to create a final project. Not knowing where to begin even though I accomplished many projects before. I couldn’t know where I should start from, because we focused on exercises during class time, and we neglected building actual projects.

Things got worse, as we were forced to stay home. We were on a lockdown because of the propagation of Covid-19. They delayed the time of the defense, which was advantageous to some extent, so I was left with longer time to work on it. I worked on it during summer (of course no work is accomplished without longer breaks ;) ).

After I graduated, I promised myself that I will work hard to learn more. Because I hadn't had the chance to be enrolled in a bachelor’s degree for some months, I tried to learn and read as many new things as I could. Simultaneously, I was preparing for exams to enroll for a bachelor’s degree. As time passed, I wasn’t sure that I could get a bachelor's degree, so I attempted to get an internship in a company. It lasted for a month.

In February, I got accepted to a bachelor which marked the beginning of a real nightmare. We had to study a lot and work at the same time on projects, starting late, we needed to compensate for all the time that went in vain. At this point, nothing was okay.

I worked day and night, non-stop. I needed to attend my classes, as it was compulsory to do so. We finished in July, but only to set for an internship (which was supposed to start in June and finish in July). Nevertheless, we did it. We finished everything along with the final project, bearing in mind that it is impossible for us to present it in August, as a consequence, it will be held in September. Overall, What was interesting was that working for a whole year non-stop in this field made my love for programming grow bigger and bigger.

All in all, I finished the degree and I finally graduated. I got my bachelor’s degree. It was time to prepare for a master’s degree, unfortunately, I hadn’t been selected, for some of my papers were not ready yet, while I met serious competition in others’ tests.

I had some hope to get accepted in the last masters that were left back then, however, luck was not my friend. It was not the end for me, so I went for plan B which was to look for an internship, it took me a while to accept this fact. Just right after a little while I found one.

THE TRUE NIGHTMARE

I started the internship. it wasn’t that cool, as having an idea about the tools and the technologies weren’t enough to actually work. Eventually, I had to double my efforts just to adapt to the work of the enterprise. At that time, I was an intern, so I had to work on any leftovers that the senior developers were stuck at or didn’t have the time to finish, also test their code and fix it. I spent days to solve those because whenever someone work on it, he adds some sort of random codes (let’s not talk about this now may be leave it to another blog)

After working a while harder to learn the framework and the methods used in big companies (because of course no matter how many technologies and tools you use, they will always add a new one to your list, and as a worker in that company you need to adapt to it as well) In 4 months of being there, I had enough of it. I got really tired of taking a 1h and half-long ride to arrive at work and another to get back home.

I had to stop. I didn’t have time to rest until I found another opportunity near home. It is also going to be both, a bit of a nightmare and a bit of a dream, but I went for it anyway. I literally finished on Friday and next Monday i was supposed to be in the next internship, fascinating right!

I spent a week after integrating into the new company during which my only task was to learn my supervisor’s framework. At the beginning, I was not really coding, I was only using my logic and some really short code tasks, and some work on the front-end. Of course, that didn't last for a week only, it took me more than that to move to real coding; this wasn’t encouraging for me, but it has passed anyway.

After 3 months and half I started a side project alone. I couldn't make any progress in it, nevertheless, I decided it is better to move piece by piece than not move at all. Eventually, I was making small progress everyday (but it is progress anyway). Simultaneously, I have got real tasks to accomplish in my work, which is building real code, not only putting my logic in already existing code, which was for me a shame to just copy and paste the work of others.

FALLING APART

This is my little story about getting burned out. You might be wondering that it is not, but a small point that was left unsaid is that I have been looking over certain codes for days, and I have been unable to write even one single line. I understood it, and I found solutions on the internet but writing my own code was challenging for me.

Even when I did write a single word in the code, I stopped eventually, I was always afraid of writing code and still am until now, but why? I mean why feeling afraid, fear of crashing it? I already have a saved version in github so why would I be afraid? When I feel anxious I usually say to myself hey look what if i’m not good enough for that task, even at work I'm like, how am I supposed to do that? Bearing in mind that there is a possibility that I learned that code by heart, or if i didn’t I could only look it up on the internet and boom everything is ready made for me. Though, as I said, I love to maintain my work an original one.

Anxiety got even worse, I even started being afraid of crashing the application, and couldn’t think of building a whole page without taking a big break.

For me GitHub is a tool that shows how consistent you are because coding is all about practice. Now I have a big gap in my account, at least no coding for 3 months.

FLOURISHING AGAIN

I'm not proud of it, yet I'm gonna make it up and go back to be more productive. Maybe doing a challenge of 365 days non stop, but just solving little problems at a time, and for sure not to drive myself all the way back to a burn out again.

While I'm re-editing this blog, I saw a gdg developers event is coming soon. I was about to forget that geeks blabla conf and their weekly episodes, gdg’s events, and some other podcasts played a significant role in the growth of my passion toward coding. I sought to attend every event which is held near to my city, so no worries you will see me in each.

Last tech event I attended was tech b’Darija. I'm not gonna lie, it gives me more motivation and more energy to re-organize everything in my life, and get me through my burnout. I just love to attend them, I learn, I meet new people, and I enjoy listening to all the stories and experiences they had to talk about.

Something that one of the speakers, during one of those events, talked about and stayed in my mind is taking breaks from screens. It had my attention for a while because I wondered how could people in a century, which is way developed like ours and that requires looking at screens, spend a day or longer without seeing a screen?

People not only could do that but they must do it. It is healthier. Now, I start giving myself Sunday's off, taking walks, reading books and not e-books since I was addicted to eBooks and using screens. Nevertheless, I start taking breaks from time to time. Thus, i work a bit and rest a bit. When a bug doesn't wanna be fixed, some rest is important, because the more effort you put on that same bug and time you give it gets you an hour away from solving it.

I now can’t code for hours as I used to do, but I set small goals and I use Pomodoro technique to focus more for at least half an hour each time. I do challenge myself now, and beat my anxiety by telling myself I'm good enough and people who assign me to that specific task know exactly that I am competent to do it. Yes it takes some time to be completed, yet I will do it. Sometimes, motivation breaks up with us and wants to play with someone else for a while. Well, that is okay because we could fake it sometimes (give it some time to get back). Some other times, small things trigger its comeback. For instance, seeing others working helps me, personally, especially to get back to work. Not jealousy, but the working atmosphere helps. Sometimes, motivation chooses the night to finally feel humble and get down to you. This is the worst because that’s your time to get some sleep. Even if you choose to neglect it and get to your sleep, you can’t, because your brain is fully awake and overwhelmed.

As a consequence, insomnia kicks in. Therefore, whenever I find myself tired I go to sleep no matter what I'm doing, i just go, because deep down I know if I didn’t, I won’t get the chance to sleep well.

LAST WORDS

My advice is that even though passion drives us, either in work or in life, it is not enough. We should, at some points, get some rest not only physically but also mentally. One should not push himself forward until he falls, but rather he should take it step by step and take everything easy on himself.