Still hanging in there…barely!

Thu, Jun 23, 2005
Me
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4 comments

As I expected, it’s been a tough week. With C leaving, Brandon and I have had to hurriedly interview candidates for our new open internship position. (Not that an intern will replace C, but like I said in my previous blog, it’s much more cost-effective that way for now.) We’re also preparing for some big changes at Simpli, which is why I’m getting ready to lease some phat Cisco equipment. I’m not quite ready to announce those changes yet since they haven’t been finalized, but I will announce them here once we sign everything and get all the details hammered out.

I’m still fighting off depression. It comes up and hits me in the face just about every hour. Right now my biggest worry is financial. Simpli is managing just fine, but it doesn’t allow me very much of a salary, and that’s really starting to get to me. Having so little money to myself is making me feel trapped. It got so bad earlier this month for me that I took some contract work. I did regret that (I just couldn’t work 12+ hours for Simpli and then do hours of contracts), so I’m no longer doing contract work. Again. Until I check my personal checking account balance and realize I have no money to spend, so I do another contract…

I’m also feeling trapped at Simpli in general. I’m coming up on my 4-year anniversary of starting Simpli, and while I do feel proud of how far we’ve come, I’m tired. I want to relax. I want to go out and have fun. I want to explore the world. I’ve been working full-time and then some since I was 17… doing contract work and then eventually moving to Simpli full-time.

Tonight I had to go to the datacenter when a customer had a server issue that required “eyes” (it was hung on boot), and as I badged myself in at 10:30PM, I started wondering if I was pushing it too hard. I know very few people who put in as many hours as I do on a regular basis. Even when I’m not available via IM, I’m on the phone with customers. I got awakened today at 7:30AM by a business call, for instance. Downtown San Jose was full of people having fun and relaxing with their friends, and that didn’t help my mood.

I need a break.

I realize that if I keep pushing myself so hard, eventually something’s going to snap. I’m trying desperately to put the brakes on before something really damaging happens (as it has for me in the past when I can no longer handle the stress.) Still, I feel like I’m endlessly speeding up; I’m going faster and faster, trapped in a collision course that I can do very little to prevent. I yearn to get in my car and just drive down the coast; to turn off the cell phone and actually sleep in without RIIIIING! waking me up. I wish I could actually take a shower without hearing the phone ringing and thinking “Oh, shit, I wonder if that’s a client calling.” (No, really. I can’t even take a 20-minute shower without the phone ringing. Sad but true.) I am so far behind with responding to emails that I wonder if I will ever catch up. Oh, Simpli is doing OK. But I feel like I’m being dragged behind a truck and my head is the one hitting the endless potholes.

Hopefully we will eventually find some investors (I’m behind on those emails too; sigh) or some big customers and that will help me pay myself what I deserve to be paid to manage this company. When I was working at Sun, I got paid about 60% of what the person sitting next to me doing the same job I was doing got paid due to a “fluke” in their system. (Long story.) I made less there than the BART driver whose train I took to work made. And Simpli pays even less than that job. Even though I can expense gas money, etc., I don’t have any more money than I did working at Sun, and I wasn’t making enough there to survive either.

I can only pray that it gets better soon, because I am definitely not motivated to keep working right now.

Fortknox says:

6/24/2005 at 5:33 am

Welcome to adult life. We all don’t have as much money as we’d like (I’m currently broke and have an AC to repair), and we just want to get away like we did back in high school, but it isn’t going to happen.

You should probably look at hiring someone full time, along with the intern to drop your hours to a much easier 8 a day and off on the weekends. Look into automating some processes and stuff. You are overworked and need to get some of that time taken away…

Larry says:

6/24/2005 at 7:18 am

It sounds like right now you’re living to work, instead of working to live. I can sympathise, I’ve always lived borderline in terms of cash, and then in my last job I was commuting, so add an extra 5 hours to the working day each day. Not fun.

For me, the solution has been to get a place to live close enough to my office that I can walk in (and a new job, thanks to redundancy!), but it sounds like you just have too much work to cover by yourself. I hope you manage to find some solution to it, because constant work with no “me” time will just serve to make you more unhappy, and you don’t need that 🙁

Jakiao says:

6/24/2005 at 9:11 am

Burnout, all to common and typical. For the longest time, you and my friends have been telling me that I need a vacation. Listen to yourself and realize that you need one too, and you need it sooner than later. In short time, I will be taking my vacation. Follow my lead?

I realize that the vacation time offered is an absolutely needed time for each person. Without it, the stress builds and the mind-numbing feeling slowly starts to set it and take control. You have done way too much work to simply let yourself be destroyed by it.

Take a step back, listen to the two before me, and relax sometime. Kickback and relax.