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How to Come out of Burnout

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To be completely honest: I have no idea what the answer is here. I don’t think there’s just one correct answer. Burnout is so unique to every individual, which become more obvious to me after I asked my followers about how they cope with feeling uninspired:

💫🌟✨ Quick question 💫🌟✨

What do you do for yourself when you start to feel uninspired? I haven’t been coding much outside of work like I used to. My brain is telling me, “Write some code!” but when I open my laptop my body tells me, “Meh, close the lid.”

link to tweet

Some people take a break, some try to push through, and a lot of people said that they try to consume inspiring content.

This isn’t the first time I’ve gone through burnout. It also happened at the beginning of this year when I finally figured out I needed a different work environment. With less than a year of professional experience at the time, I knew I’d have to work hard if I wanted to stand out from other folks with more years of experience. That’s when I started writing more, networking on Twitter, and learning out loud.

Along the way, I discovered how much work there is to be done in my local community (and the world 🤯) when it comes to web accessibility. In the developer community, a lot of folks are under the impression that accessibility is hard or expensive. Outside of it, people are ignorant to how accessibility tools, such as screen readers, actually work and ableism is rampant.

When news about the [Supreme Court rejecting an appeal from Domino’s] came out, it was really exciting to hear, until I read the comments. There were far too many people with far too little understanding of web accessibility sharing their opinions on whether or not companies should be sued for making inaccessible products. I tried to do my part in educating people by explaining that screen readers only read things correctly if a site is built to work with tools. I also argued with people about whether or not discrimination should be legal.

My overwhelming need to speak and educate along with the incredible amount of ableism I’ve come across in the last several weeks are what I think have mostly contributed to the burnout I’m experiencing. It’s vastly different from the burnout I experienced earlier this year. As such, I had no idea how to fix it. I fell into this cycle of feeling guilty for not writing or coding on side projects, which led to feeling even more burned out.

So what’s starting to bring me out of this now?

If you’re struggling with burnout, I suggest trying all of these things. Some of them will work and some of them won’t. Everyone is different and even every time you experience burnout can be different. The people who matter will understand what you’re going through. The ones who don’t might judge you and try to make you feel bad rather than lend a hand.

Stick around the folks that lend a hand and support you. They’ll see you through this. You’ll make it to the other side.

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