solo sucks
I feel so lost every time I sit down to do anything productive. Work, school, personal, it doesn't matter. My brain gets fuzzy, my eyelids get heavy, and I just want to lay down with my cat.
I know I'm dealing with burnout. I know I need to rest. I know that doing this all on my own has done nothing but exhaust me.
So here's the short version, up front: I'm looking for community. People to code with or alongside, to build cool projects with, to ask the really, really dumb questions I have. I don't even know exactly what to ask for, just that I want this.
If you want the longer version of why, keep reading.
I log onto Twitter, Bluesky, even here, and I see wonderful people working together, building each other up, building genuinely cool software. And I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. Like I'm alone in my dev journey.
Some of that is just me. I'm awkward reaching out to people I don't know, and I'm not the most social creature by nature.
But it's also that I feel like I started my dev journey too late in life. I'm almost 35 and just started my Computer Science degree. I'm not upset about how long it took me to find what I actually want to do. I'm grateful for the life I've lived.
What does upset me is that in taking so long, I forgot how to build community. I settled into my life and just kept my head down (sound familiar?). Now I freeze every time the idea of reaching out crosses my mind.
At the same time, I'm terrified to actually ask for help. To ask someone to teach me like I'm five. That feels like far too large an ask to put out there. That's what I've been struggling with for the last year.
Frozen with terror, I exist as a deer in headlights, until it gets so overwhelming that I close my computer, put down my phone, and go find my cat to annoy.
But this can't continue. I can't keep burning out because I'm too afraid to try and build some community.
So here it is, me trying to step out of the headlights and ask for help. If you made it this far, thank you for reading. And if any of this felt familiar, let me know. I genuinely can't be the only person out here who feels lost and alone in it all.
I'm most active on Discord (DnD nerd, surprise), so if you know of any cool, active communities looking to recruit a slightly weird enby, hit me up.
Top comments (4)
Hey dude, i just wanted to reach out to you, i completely get where your coming from, i do this alone and im still grinding away hard at it, i been through my fair share of burnouts, its lonely when your not in a community and find it hard to get yourself into other communities, ive started learning to stop forcing it all my coding and design works, im absoloutley obsessed with coding man, but you gotta just know when to take a break, whether its a day or 2 or a week or 2, one thing that helps alot its a strict structured routine and to stop when its time to stop for the day, sleep helps staying up late thinking catching up and learning more and more doesnt help at all, unles you actually feel up for it but forcing it and lack of sleep and discipline gets your even quicker into a burnout!
I appreciate you! I've been taking a bit of a break (aside from school work of course) and only been coding when I get the itch to do so instead of forcing myself to. I have a really hard time with structured routine. It always fails me, or I it. I work a little better when it's a piqued interest, but I know that isn't sustainable.
Its hard mate structured doesnt always work for everyone doing it solo is hard too i started learning to design assets for game design to break up some of the software development side for myself helps with different concepts i noticed and its still enjoyable I just started gaming again in between to use it as a bit of a break to avoid the burnout, theres a podcast I found that really helped me realise thst everyone goes through this and struggles with structures routines discipline, it was a really amazing podcast and how far they've come from where they started is amazing they coach alot of people like me and you stuck in the burniut or tutorial hell, another thing too tutorials. They make the burnout alot worse I noticed it prolongs it
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