Depression?
I read a blog post somebody wrote somewhere, that touched upon the subject of depression and being burnt out. I read a few of the bullet points of how to identify depression and the handful of point there were all checked ...
- Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
Yes, feeling empty and that deep sadness that nothing I do will make a change because the world is so fucked.
- Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
Mostly hopelessness, there is a constant uphill battle to make ends meet
- Irritability
Yes and no, I get annoyed with things and then apathetic
- Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
Worthlessness
- Decreased energy or fatigue
Zero energy, always just scraping by ..
- Difficulty sleeping, early morning awakening, or oversleeping
Hard to get out of bed, bordering oversleeping
- Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
Yes, this is something that makes me sad.
- Moving or talking more slowly
Moving slowly, medical issues.
- Feeling restless or having trouble sitting still
Restless mind, working overtime to solve problems.
- Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
Constant brain fog, memory is glitchy
- Changes in appetite or weight
Added 30 kilos over the last 6 months :(
- Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
Not actively thinking of suicide, just not caring or being apathetic. Only thing that drives me forward is son and wife, not wanting to leave them in a bad situation.
- Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems without a clear physical cause that do not ease even with treatment
Low key headaches, sometimes migrains
Almost a year ago I sort of crashed, when I did not manage to deliver a solution that I was responsible for, as the solution design were scoped for a message flow of a few hundred messages a day, but real life flow were over 100000 messages per day and there were hard limitations in tools and platform, I never got it to work properly .. the PL was not pleased as I constantly asked for more time, to try to solve it. Finally it broke, I could not deliver on something that was almost designed as a setup-to-fail .. I was moved out from the project, benched.
I went without any assignment for a period of two months where I was temporarily engaged in small projects, gigs of a few hours here and there.
In February I got an assignment, alone, where I was a resource in a migration project for a hotel chain, where it was only me and this other person, where I was tasked with upgrading integrations that was very much aged, both in code and approach, it went on well and I made progress until I was assigned a task that involved a certain type of product, I coded and tested and could not get it to run properly, asked within the company if anybody had worked with technique X on platform Y, in context of Z .. nobody had, or at least nobody responded .. so I had to tell the customer I could not solve it. The response was "Let me think about this over the weekend.", they came back after the weekend and terminated the contract.
Since last of June I haven't had any assignments but plenty of short gigs, a few hours here and there.
Since February I've gained 30 kilos of weight, some 66 lbs.
Spoke to my mgr about this and were promised sessions with a shrink a few weeks ago, nothing has materialized yet.