Time to start writing again. Let's talk about how I burned out, as a starter in a series of posts about how I'm doing now, a few months on - what's worked, and what hasn't. I'm writing the guide I wish I'd been able to read as I figured this stuff out, and I'm going to add to it as I continue on through the journey I've started.

Many burnout guides start with "quit your job" or "stop working"; that isn't an option for me, and it's not something I want, so this is how I've made it work (so far).

This isn't a terribly happy story, but it does have a happy end, I hope. I'm still working on myself, and will be for the next year and more.

Probably best to start at the beginning, where I left off.

I stopped blogging sometime around the same time I started having a real, full-time job. I guess 2013ish. Back then I was just starting out my career as a software engineer at BBC Research & Development - fresh out of university, and feeling better after a few years mostly spent dealing with manic depression and anxiety.

I worked long hours back then - going from home in the Oxfordshire countryside (living with my parents) to central London offices on transport I could afford on my BBC salary meant starting the day around half 5, and getting back between half 7 or 8 in the evening - giving me about two hours a night to myself, plus the odd hour on the trusty Oxford Tube (a slow but cheap and reliable coach service) if I wasn't trying to get some more sleep, balancing a 16" workstation on my lap and working on personal projects.

The work was fantastic, the people unmatched, the opportunities constant. It was a wonderful creative oasis that in many respects was powerfully healing, and was a forgiving environment for someone with no social skills to learn some. After about 4 years of the long hours, though, I realised I was tired, and needed to move in to central London or change where I worked - and after some experimental house-hunting on that BBC salary, decided my mental health wasn't going to get better if I swapped the countryside home for a flat share. My folks had recently left for work in Singapore and left me looking after the house, so it was hard to beat as a base - a small room, but with a garden, clean air and dark skies. A shoebox on the Central Line wasn't appealing.

Swapping the commute for more work

Gigaclear had recently built a FTTH network through our village, and given their HQ was then 20 minutes down the road, I reached out and managed to secure a position as the company's first full-time software engineer.

Seven very high-stress years passed, during which time I probably "burned out" a few times, but I kept pushing through. I ended up in hospital after one particularly stressful week, going straight from the office to A&E to have chest pains checked out, and had ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in the following week to confirm hypertension - but not worth medicating so long as I lost weight, said my GP at the time. Booze and junk food kept me going, along with fascinating (if frustrating) work and the urge to make connectivity happen for communities like mine, who weren't served by other operators. It was a breakneck pace in a rapidly expanding sector, and career-wise, I grew a lot.

I survived 4 managers (some great, some... not so much), helped start and grow out out several tech teams, wore most hats it was possible to wear in the company (often in various combinations), and added a few more job titles to the collection - technical architect, chief engineer. I was an ass at times, learned a lot about how to manage and work with people (and about the tech), and got a bit better at not being an ass (eventually).

But I was stressed, and I was tired, all the time. When the company started winding up network builds and cutting staff costs I was in the first tranche of those exited, and the enforced break of garden leave made me realise just how physically demanding that stress was. I picked up birding, and spent quiet days walking around our local nature reserves for a couple of months. Reflecting, I had regained hours of commuting time, but traded it for a higher-stress job and ended up just as stressed if not more. I'd worked long hours, and often didn't get home any earlier than I did at the BBC. I promised myself the next job needed to be calmer, and I'd manage my time better.

Mergers & Marriage

Around this time - just before I left Gigaclear - I got married to my wonderful wife. I was the heaviest I've ever been in the run-up to the wedding - I weighed about 134kg. I'm 6'4"/193cm, so this put me firmly in the likely-consequences end of "obese"; living alone, working from home most days, stress eating (a few cans of pringles or sharing bags of crisps a week were typical), drinking most evenings, and maybe walking 2000 steps a day on an average work day weren't doing me any favours (I can't blame it all on the pandemic, but it didn't help either). The weight started to improve after we married (not until we'd made it through all the barfi and ladoo from the wedding, though!). Cooking good food is easier for two, and Jasnam supported my slow and steady weight loss. Life got better for a spell; we bought a house, did a lot of DIY, and generally speaking I kept work better contained. Balance was better.

Fast forward to July this year. I'd joined Zzoomm - another FTTP builder - after Gigaclear, to head up their systems and development function. The people were great and my boss supportive; the company full of interesting challenges and personalities. I was - still am! - enjoying myself.

Two years in, having delivered a bunch of major projects and improvements - and through most of it, much more relaxed than at the last place - we went through a merger with FullFibre/Digital Infrastructure and BeFibre, a wholesale network and retail brand, making us definitively one of the largest alternative networks (i.e. not BT, Virgin Media) in the country. New people, new challenges, lots of stress and uncertainty. Redundancies, hiring, lots of people panicking about their roles and the future, as is the way with these things.

Of course, that also meant a lot of complex systems mergers, data migrations, dealing with 75,000+ customer accounts and a 600,000+ home network with a small team... the long days, working till 10, and the evening drinking and stress eating returned.

Tipping points

The last week of July I got out of bed on Monday morning and realised I couldn't face work.

I'd slept poorly again, was feeling defeated, overwhelmed, completely unmotivated, anxious. I'd barely made it through the previous week, churning out descriptionless Jira tickets and some halfhearted Python. Irritable bowels were a constant companion, as were some gin and tonics in the evenings to take the edge off everything. I'd been thinking about my future more than usual, and that was a depressing thoughtway. I called in sick - the first time in years - and spent the day resting in bed. I weighed 128.7kg that morning.

The day after was no better. I realised I was on the verge of burning out, maybe even burnt out already - I checked 80% of the symptoms on most checklists - and that this time maybe I had pushed too far. Normally I'd push through and let my body deal with it, but this time I had a better work environment established, and was more senior in role. A deadline we'd set ourselves at work was fast approaching. I called my boss that afternoon and explained how I was feeling.

To my boss' immense credit, their response was fantastic; by the following day, the deadline was moved out, and I had reassurance from the CEO and board that I could step away and recover.

My team covered the week and - particularly given the team had only recently come together from the two companies merging - rallied incredibly, which helped my mood a lot.

I thought - OK, I can rest and get back to it next week.

I was wrong.

The medical opinion

At the end of that week of rest, I wasn't feeling any better. I took my blood pressure measurement - something I'd done plenty of times in years before. I had a little Omron machine by my bedside. I liked having a baseline of health data and wanted the odd bit of reassurance I was "OK", given the palpitations, skipped heartbeats as I tried to sleep, and so on that I'd accepted so far as part of my life - in retrospect, yet more warning signs.

I was just on the edge of stage 3 hypertension, or hypertensive crisis - in simpler terms, the bit where most blood pressure guides advise you to urgently call your GP or go to A&E.

So I did what I should've done about 10 years ago. I took a look at where I was, and conceded that what I had been doing was not working - I couldn't just push through. I called a GP, and explained my situation and my symptoms, looking for advice on how to proceed.

They immediately signed me off sick for a month (to start), forbade me to work, and advised me to:

• rest
• try and reduce my weight
• abstain from drinking
• refrain from vigorous exercise
• ... and so on

Fuck.

Starting a plan

At this point I realised I'd had a near miss. I felt like I'd nearly been clipped by a passing truck. Obviously what I had been doing was not working. It was actively hurting me, and I'd slowly teetered up to the edge of early-age heart-attack territory.

Looking back, obviously I'd worked hard, and adopted some unhealthy coping mechanisms, but it hadn't all really added up and sunk in how much I'd ignored my body till this point. I started reading the metrics from my wearables and smart scales differently - that high BMI wasn't an idle curiosity, or a slight annoyance, it was a flashing red warning light. The constant high stress and low body battery on my Garmin Fenix was telling me I was overdoing it. I had the data, but hadn't acted on it.

I spoke with my boss again - obviously this wasn't going to be short term. I was stressed by the prospect of not working, knowing the complex things going on at work, so I proposed rather than down tools I would take two more weeks off, and then try to work no more than 3 mornings a week at most and only if I felt able, giving my team time to talk to me. If I wasn't feeling it, I'd not work. I'd focus on helping them move along our plans, with my boss and my senior team filling in for me where they could. We made a plan and agreed to take things day by day.

The next steps were working out how to actually fix me, and how to stop this happening again.

Onwards

In my next update I'm going to cover how I've started to fix my blood pressure, starting with my weight.

I don't have a full roadmap for what the rest of this guide will look like, and I'd like to know what you'd like to know about as a reader.

I'm still navigating things and figuring stuff out myself, but I think that's a better time to write a guide than in retrospect with the full benefit of hindsight.