Developer struggles and getting through them

Transcription

  Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of the compulsive podcast. This one’s going to be a little interesting, a little introspective. Maybe I was struggling to come up with a discussion point for this episode this week. And the wonderful discord community than I am part of gave me an excellent suggestion on this one.

So shout out to you focusing there. I’ll put a link in the show notes. If you want to join the discord. Because there were just some wonderful folks in there. And the idea for this one is to talk about those times when. You’re a developer and you’ve got plenty of things that you need to get done. But you just don’t feel like doing them. And this is going to be more of a developer life kind of story here.

And this is happening to me right now. I’m going to be completely transparent with you. I am struggling to stay on top of my personal projects. I find it very easy. As I’m sure many of you do to stay on top of those. Client projects that day job, whatever that looks like for you, because that’s something that has to be done and you’ve got to do it.

And no matter whether you feel like doing it or not, that’s your job. But when it comes to your side projects, your personal projects, your learning plans, whatever it may be. Anytime. It’s something just for you in the back of your head is a little voice that says you don’t have to do this right now.

And that voice is pretty loud. For me right now. And I’m trying to fight it and realizing that in itself is part of the problem. If you are interested in this listen on the idea being here, that self motivation. And dedication to getting things done. Is not always the right thing to do.

Now, I’m going to explain this the best I can, but I got a feeling this is probably going to relate to a lot of you. At some point you’ll be the, been there or sad to say, you probably will be there one day. In some ways I always think of it as a case of temporary burnout. You have those times where just for a few days or whatever, you’re like, I don’t want to do this. oh, it’s a case of, I want to do this, but I got no idea what to do.

And this podcast is a good example because right now I have not been writing a lot of swift code or app development. Along those lines in the past couple of weeks, which makes it hard to talk about these things. When I’m not. Interacting with them. On a regular basis and feeling like I can talk about it in some kind of authoritative way, I guess is the best way to describe this. Now the problem there is Friday comes around and I know I need to release a new episode.

Hopefully I’ve recorded something before Friday, but in the case of the week, just gone, we got to Friday and the weekend and I realized. I just don’t have an episode to talk about because. I have not done any swift last week. I’ve not worked on my apps last week. I worked on some game development stuff, but it was unrelated to swift. And I tried to keep this show to the apple platforms and that develop a lifecycle they’re widows.

So I’ve just struggling. I’m thinking to myself. I don’t have anything to talk about, but I really want to release an episode. But I don’t want to release an episode just for the sake of doing it and talk about nothing. Hopefully, that’s not what I’m doing right now.

And then this idea came along. Like I say, in the discourse, shout out to those folks who’ve said. That’s, what you should talk about. Talk about these problems, right? Because willing to bet that we all have them. And there’s plenty of folks out there talking about how successful things are for them and how they’ve done this.

They’ve done that they’ve shipped this. They’ve had a wonderful time with their new apple vision pro headset and so on. But it takes a different kind of, I’m going to quote apple here. It takes courage. I know you’ll either get it or you won’t to talk about when things are not going right, all you’re stuck in a rut and you’re like know I’ll get out of this, but I just don’t know how.

And I’m here to tell you now it’s fine. It’s going to happen to you. Hopefully it won’t happen often, but it probably will happen at least once at some point, if it hasn’t already and it’s okay. You can do those things and the people that you all be holding to in my case podcast listeners here, or whatever it may be. That’s okay.

They’re going to understand, because my target audience here is folks who are. In our development. Lifecycle somewhere along the way. And so this is going to be familiar to you all and therefore, it’s not going to sound off topic. It’s something we should talk about. I have done episodes in the past and check it out.

There is a fantastic. Episode with, Hey Jay Wilson, shout out to you where we spoke about mental health and things like that as developers. we should talk about these things because it happens to us all. And there’s no worse feeling than it happens. And you feel like I’m in a deep, dark hole in my developer basement. By myself.

Nobody helped me because it’s not true. I’m lucky. Like I say, I have it. Wonderful discord audience. Wonderful live stream audience. And of course fantastic feedback from folks that listen to this podcast and thank you to all of you. So I’m blessed that I have at least three different paths that, that helped me out during these times.

And maybe you don’t have that. And if you don’t, Hey, again, come by our discord because we will help you out. This happens to all of us. Or if you don’t want to talk about. In public I’m not an expert. Let me. Start right there. I’m not an expert, not a medical professional or anything like that. But Hey, reach out to me.

That’s fine. I’m willing to help you out here, as I’ve always said, a goal of this podcast and everything I do. Is to help folks and to make folks realize that, Hey, if I can do whatever it is, you can do it too. Even when you don’t think you can. And even when I don’t think I can, someone points out that I can.

And so I want to help you there. so to that end, it’s okay to have weeks where you just feel like. Whatever it is. I can’t show up and do it this week. Do that right? Respect what your brain and your body is telling you. I was saying to myself the other day, which is for example, I think it was yesterday, actually, Sunday. I didn’t do barely add-on thing.

I was as lazy as could be yesterday. And that’s exactly what I needed to reset and energize myself for a Monday to get up and do the day job and do things. That is exactly what I needed and it’s fine to have that. And I know I’ve touched on this before. In other episodes, but I really want to emphasize that you cannot endlessly produce things and you’re I’m not going to say you’re a fool.

If you think you can, maybe some folks can fantastic, but it’s probably not most of us. And therefore it’s okay to not work on your projects. It’s okay to. I don’t, in my case, it’s not okay for me to not write swift for a couple of weeks because I’ll forget how to do it. But it’s okay to not work on your apps and everything else I’ve shipped a game update with game center integration, so I’m thinking. My audience on this podcast may be interested in how that went and how to do that, because it was a lot easier than I expected.

And game center of course, is in there with the topics on this show, swift and everything else and an apple services. If you’re interested in that, let me know, compile Swift on any of the networks or Compile Swift dot com. But it’s okay to have times where you’re like, I just don’t think I have anything to share with anyone this week.

I have not done a live stream in a couple of weeks because I just didn’t feel I could turn up and do something. Decent. Make it worthwhile. People’s time. To sit and watch me screw up code. And things like that, but I’m starting to get over that now. And I’ve got a few things. I don’t normally live stream if I don’t feel like I’ve got something that will be interesting to folks. Or if I’m just not in a place where I felt like I want to hang out and have fun with folks. Because sometimes that’s what we do as well. So just want to put that out there. And in episode this week, just to let you all know that, Hey, it happens to everybody. And to all of you who reached out and Hey, where’s the podcast, where’s this how you doing? Thank you so much.

It always means the world, right? It’s nice to know that people are out there and they notice these things and they just check in with you. Hopefully I’ve got through that slump period again for a while, and I’ll be cranking things out. And like I say, if this is something you’re going through, Reach out to me, join our discord. And let me know and try to do my best to help you get through it.

Other than that folks, that’s all I’ve got for you. I will speak to you in the next episode.