instead of quitting outright, i reduced my hours commitment to 20 hours per week until the end of my contract
on the surface, that feels pretty great. that should mean that for a while i will have time to do all the self-improvement and job-search-prep things i want to do while still making income and not being a total burden on my family.
i doubt they’ll want to renew my contract, but if they did, i thought i might even accept, depending on how 20h/wk feels until then. i’m assuming they won’t though.
but
i’m doing something wrong. it has been three weeks(!) (i thought it was two) since the change and i still feel stressed out and lacking time to do anything. as if nothing at all has changed.
i think this is because i still have that unfinished project, stuck like a hangnail that just won’t rip off. it’s 95% done, i’m under tons of pressure to get it out the door, but just won’t finish. every time i fix a thing, another problem pops up. i feel oblicated to work on it, so i throw bits of time in here and there, but the builds take several minutes so iteration is agonizingly slow. while waiting i context-switch to other stuff. but without a dedicated block of time i don’t dare start anything significant, and end up squandering my newfound personal time.
once this project is clear, i’m half expecting everything to suddenly improve. if not, well, i won’t be renewing that contract for sure, because the burnout is aparrently still smouldering.
even if everything goes to shit at least it will be over in five weeks.