Staying on track to be MF and ready to support my daughter at 18

Cheery_Daff

Aw ElmoR, have a hug (((()))) certainly does sound like burnout. I don't know whether you read the Mr Money Mustache forums but they've had a thread running on burnout recently which has some good stories and advice in, really interesting

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/welcome-to-the-forum/feeling-burned-out-anyone-else/

I hope you can get back into the swing of things without feeling like you're sinking into a quagmire. Really tough, I think especially in the type of job where things don't always get dealt with by other people and are waiting for your to get back. 

Remember - health ALWAYS comes first - before money, career, everything.

Lots of virtual hugs. 

Good luck with your cucumbers! We had some a couple of years ago and they were quite bitter - apparently because they got stressed with my inconsistent watering!! 🙄😂

ElmoR

OOOooo thank you for the hugs Cheery, much appreciated

I had a read through the thread on burnout and can recognise some of the symptoms, though thankfully not all of them. One comment hit home - I thought I was starting to get early Alzheimer type memory loss and had even taken a couple of online quizzes wondering if a trip to GP was needed, but memory loss can be a sign of burnout/stress too. On the weekend I also had a serious stomach cramp, dizziness, hot flush/sweating and a dash to the loo, which in retrospect may be down to dodgy frozen/defrosted supermarket strawberries?! It's been a fun couple of weeks as you can tell. Any burnout has been a slow burn over more than a decade. Like many say on the thread, you get stuck in bad work-life balance habits. Must now make an effort to change, easier said than done at 50+ years old..

Some things to try :

• do not look at email on days off (it is like a compulsion, no idea how to tackle this)
• do not look at email before 8.30am or after 5.30pm (ditto above, is there a screen lock that could be used? like parental control??).
• take all of my annual leave allowance (never achieved this before - have now booked all but 5 days and it means that I'm effectively working half time from now til the start of September, what to do with all that time?? )
• stop feeling that I must scan for and intervene when I see things going to !!!!!!, that are not my responsibility (involves letting things turn to !!!!!!).
• reset negative mindset back to positive (like going back to factory settings now?)
• have an enjoyable life outside work (workaholism/drive has been contaminating everything - used to enjoy Army Reserves role and growing stuff in the greenhouse doesn't seem to fill that gap - no adrenaline involved with nurturing cucumbers?, what to do? something more involving? another volunteer role?)

Keeping some perspective though...DD is doing well and is happy, DH also well and happy, puppy pooch still a little horror but cute with it. Goal number 1 64% achieved so far, so it's ticking along well. I've got a heck of a lot of leave over the next few months - that's a good thing (except I have no clue what to do with it all!!!  )...

Hope your week is going well,

ElmoR xx

Cheery_Daff

Aw bless you. Hope that some of your symptoms do turn out to be down to burnout, none of them sound fun. If you're never taking all your holiday, and can't stay out of emails at evenings and weekends then that alone is enough to make things unmanageable I would think.

I know there are programmes that can block certain websites at certain points - possibly leech block? Usually used for social media but can't see why you couldn't block emails too (if it's an Internet based email provider of course - ours is). 

I have no sensible suggestions I'm afraid. I confess I have ALWAYS taken all of my leave - that is something I absolutely won't compromise on. I've stuffed life outside of work with so many ridiculous things that I just don't have time to fit them in otherwise 😂 Highly recommend buying ramshackle house with far too much land and trying to do everything yourself 😂

I'm pretty good on emails too - I do sometimes work into the evening, but I never start again once I've stopped, and I only ever do the odd weekend for a grant deadline (and never check emails outside of work). I don't know if there's a trick - I like my job but for me it is very much a JOB - they pay me and I do stuff. They pay me well, and I probably do slightly more than they deserve, but they're not having my evenings and weekends as well - there's nothing they could pay me that would be enough. I do hope you can get to that point too. Some of my colleagues feel chained to their desks/emails and it's awful to see. I hope once you step back a bit you'll find things to fill the other bits of your life a bit more.

(I might be coming to you for your new tips soon though - I have a grant in at the minute, and the decision meeting is TODAY. I won't hear the outcome today of course, but I'm off for a fortnight after tomorrow 😮 My plan is to NOT CHECK EMAILS the whole time and just wait to find out the decision when I get back. Will I manage it?!)

Oh, and I have to disagree about growing cucumbers not being exciting - mine are currently covered with red spider mite so I am engaged in a full on battle to the death in the greenhouse 😂😂

Baileys_Babe

When not at work, on what devices do you access work emails?

When you feel the urge to check your work emails outside of working hours can you make a list of things to distract yourself with?

Karmacat

Cheery's point about health coming before **everything** is so important - ignoring that is how my chronic fatigue got so bad.  Maybe four years of my life, lived in survival mode only, and the same again at half speed, even allowing for age.  

And take that holiday!  I've always taken all my holiday when I was employed.  When I was self employed (most of my working life) I took 8 weeks.  Lovely.

South_coast

Two suggestions on the emails:
1. If they're coming through on your personal phone, then can you delete your password from the memory on the phone/change the password on your PC so the phone doesn't know the password just before you go on holiday so they physically don't come through, hence the willpower to stop yourself checking not being the issue? I used to do this in old-old job and it works! Appreciate it's not very practical to do it overnight every day though!
2. If they're on your work phone (or you're looking at your laptop 😱) then give it to DH/DD to hide somewhere, so again the choice is taken out of your hands. This would work for overnight and for holidays. If you think they'll forget where they put it, set an alarm for when you need it so you can play hunt the phone when it goes off. I'm REALLY hoping you have got all the notification sounds muted already so you won't hear them if you get emails (it's the first thing I do in a new job, so I can concentrate on what I want to be concentrating on and not reacting every time I hear a ping or see something pop up - I am not Pavlov's dog 🤣!)

I feel you on the memory issues though, I'm almost a year on from finishing my old job now and mine is definitely improving. No longer do I stop mid-sentence with no idea of what I had been about to say, or think about doing something 10 times before actually remembering to do it (although alcohol intake was probably also a factor in the decline in memory for me and coincidentally also much better now!)

Good luck x

South_coast

After referencing Pavlov's dogs yesterday, by pure chance I stumbled across this article on a FIRE blog:
https://affordanything.com/what-most-people-dont-know-about-pavlovs-dogs/

I didn't know any of that other part of the story beyond the salivating, but I found it very interesting so thought I'd share it. You could be right about the need for adrenaline x

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, that is indeed interesting (not that I condone such experiments on poor dogs though!) Got lost down a right old rabbit hole on that blog for a while too - not come across it before.

ElmoR

Thanks all. Karma - I have been reading about burnout and stress and trying to decide where I am down that particular path? I think I may be at S_c's Pavlov's drowned dogs stage, conditioned into 'needing' the source of stress/adrenaline/stress hormone to feel what has slowly become 'normal'? Most days include a tension headache still?! And I flop into bed at 9pm ish exhausted, even though I've only done a 2 day work week last week, and have had two days leave this week too. Next week is a full-ish work week but then I either have 2 days off or the entire week off leading up to September. So should be able to come down stress mountain slowly?

It's actually quite helpful to think of it in those terms! An almost drowned dog.

There's going to be no adrenaline source in the greenhouse because ...*stop press*...I picked a cucumber and it tastes like...well, a cucumber!! Success!! Will keep an eye out for pests though...Today's lunch will be a feta salad with our home grown cucumber, but shop bought toms because my tomato plants have only just flowered and no sign of any actual fruits there yet.

Moneywise, we are losing cash all over the place this month and might need to tap the savings account. One moggy was in a scrap = £100 vet bill. DD's driving lessons each week. DD's geography school trip to cough up for. We are saving on the doggy day care just now because the pup has started her first season. One month at home before she can return apparently. We also bought a mini chainsaw, as you do.

I don't see the month becoming less spendy either because I promised DD a clothes shopping trip once the school summer holiday starts, which is next week...I can't complain though because she tends to go for independent shops, charity shops or prIm@rk, no designer nonsense.  I hover around and try to influence her natural fibres v plastic fibres decisions

More lounging around and reading novels today with occasional dragging the pup out for a walk (she doesn't seem to want to go out right now, I guess they get cramps too...).

ElmoR xx

Cheery_Daff

Poor dog! I never think of them having cramps but perhaps they do??

Excellent news on your cucumber, I am very impressed! 

And yes, I hope you can climb down over the next few weeks x