18 ms·
I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
- whafro 4y agoGood for him. I hope he comes back in a few months with renewed energy for the next evolution of kottke.org, but even if not, or he heads in a different direction entirely, he deserves it.
- chizhik-pyzhik 4y agoHe should probably plant the fig tree outside, at this point. (Not sure how that fits in to the analogy.)
- camgunz 4y agoHuge fan of kottke, he should take all the time he needs. I will say there's no way that tree isn't pot-bound though.
- deltarholamda 4y agoAgree. Bigger pot will probably do wonders for it.
- SCUSKU 4y agoPersonally I have finally come to terms with the fact that I am burnt out. This post is inspiring and I appreciate the author's honesty about his struggles. I hope soon I can take well well needed rest to recharge, and hopefully feel better about my life.
- djvdq 4y agoI'm about to read it, just wanted to glance at the comments first. Man, I know your feel. It was end of last week when I realized I'm facing burnout. I've no idea what to do with it. Ideally I know that break would be good but yeah, I need to work because I like not to starve :/ I hope this post will inspire also me somehow. But in the meantime - I hope you'll beat it fast.
- epberry 4y agoSeems it's a good time to step away. Come back in a year with a less crazy market and mind.
- throwawaycuriou 4y agokottke heavily shaped my thinking during peak RSS years. I miss it. social media taints the deep reflective thought he's fostered for over 20 years. I wish him bountiful inspiration on this journey.
- chrismeller 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DocTomoe 4y agoHave you considered that 9-5 jobs and bills to pay are a choice or at least the result of choices made earlier in your life? There's no sense in being jealous for the paths other people have chosen.
- chrismeller 4y ago
- mym1990 4y agoAnd what would be wrong with that?
- chrismeller 4y agoThat’s asinine. The fact that someone thinks you could just not have a 9-5 job or bills to pay? Sure, I’ll just pull myself up by my bootstraps and suddenly not worry about a job or bills. Thanks, I’ll just let them eat cake instead!
- jodrellblank 4y agoYou think kottke doesn't have bills to pay? You think there are no alternatives to 9-5 jobs? No people who work different shifts, no people who work 12hr days then take long days off? No people who work 9 months on / 3 months off? No people who work and live cheap while saving then spend the savings on long holidays because they want to? No people who have spent years building passive income sources so that they can one day take long breaks from working? No people who quit their jobs to live in the overdraft of their bank account? And on top of that you think a sarcastic one-line complaint is a good contribution to the thread?
- newaccount2021 4y agopeople posting things on the internet just isn't that much of a novelty anymore frankly nothing "internet" is a novelty anymore no one needs your edgy take, nonlinear thinking, "challenging ideas"...its all just blah blah blah the world needs people to build houses, not websites get used to seeing more old-tyme content creators sign off for good, most of their bits had just been reduced to noise anyway
- genmon 4y agoKottke.org defined a kind of blogging which expresses wonder in the world around us, a format which has been cloned and bent to the shape of SEO a million times since. More Kottkes and fewer content farms in the future please. My newsreader will be a less inspiring place until he returns. (Although… 24 years is a hella long time without a break. Sabbaticals traditionally come after 7 years. So no pressure to come back anytime soon Jason.)
- asellke 4y agoDare I say no one has done more for the blog form than Mr. Kottke. His humble, almost monkish 24-year commitment to not only the pursuit of knowledge and meaning in the world, but his absolute insistence on sharing that pursuit with anyone who wants to ride along in that journey is one of the all-time greatest contributions to the web. Godspeed, Jason. Be well and see you on the flip (in whatever way you deem fit).
- naikrovek 4y ago
- mkr-hn 4y agoI wish therapy were more accessible and better regulated. You shouldn't have to still be so upset about a normal early adopter experience 27 years later that you unload on strangers like this.
- naikrovek 4y agoin no way should this be normal.
- iratewizard 4y agoThe high school popularity contest continues forever, sadly. You learn to play it or play something else with a few close friends.
- mkr-hn 4y agoPart of navigating the world without reacting like...this, is learning to handle all the shoulds that aren't without losing yourself.
- wolverine876 4y agoWhat is the problem with the comment? (Perhaps it was edited between our responses?)
- admn2 4y agoKottke was very formative to my first big "deep dive" into the web and truly being blown away by the community / what would you could create. He was one of the original patreons. Side note: what happened to his social bookmarking site he was working on?
- kinnth 4y agoCurrently on my 4th month of a Sabbatical and not looking back. It's great to explore and find joy in the world offline again. I also no longer feel the need to be validated by the work that I do but really by how I feel and I feel good.
- benjaminwootton 4y agoCould you expand on that? Something about “not feeling the need to be validated by work” sounds appealing and is bubbling in my mind recently, but I’m not sure how that looks day to day.
- jhoechtl 4y agoThe fig trees pot is to small.
- calibas 4y agoIt's also lanky and lopsided because it's trying to get more light.
- discordance 4y agoPerhaps Kottke too needs a larger pot to explore, grow and plant roots.
- smohnot 4y agoI have to admit, I will miss the blog. Post the demise of RSS it's one of the few places I check in on directly every few days. What are your other favorites that might help me fill the gap?
- Adraghast 4y ago> Post the demise of RSS it's one of the few places I check in on directly every few days. What do you mean by this? I saw the announcement in my RSS reader before seeing it here. > What are your other favorites that might help me fill the gap? I actually just purged a lot of my media consumption for "burnout" related reasons of my own, but can second some of the recommendations Jason included at the end of the post like Colossal and Open Culture. He also posted this a couple years back: https://kottke.org/18/04/blogging-is-most-certainly-not-dead https://kottke.org/18/04/blogging-is-most-certainly-not-dead
- unpopularopp 4y agoWish more people had the financial freedom to just take a break. Everyone needs it, only a few can do it.
- tabiv 4y agoMaybe, like his tree, his pot is way to small and he is root-bound.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoJason posts a handful of cool links each week and occasionally writes a few paragraphs about them. He also sometimes produces a podcast. As far as I can tell, this is the full extent of his job. It’s really hard to imagine getting “burnt out” from this. It sounds exactly how many people actively enjoy spending their free time: surf the internet for fun and take a few minutes sharing a couple cool links with your friends.
- jpadkins 4y agomaybe people just need to take a break from the internet? especially people who have been a part of the internet for almost the whole time of the commercial web.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoIt really rubs me the wrong way that someone claims to be "burnt out" from a job that probably requires an average of an hour or two a day of non-taxing work. I'd love to see Jason say with a straight face that he's "burnt out" to a minimum wage worker who works 12+ hours days, 7 days a week, or even to your average office drone who spends 8 hours a day pushing TPS reports without any breaks in a soulless cubicle. It just seems really tone deaf and privileged, especially given how much Jason has loved to post about issues regarding privilege as of late. It's on the level of someone saying they're "malnourished" because they had to give up a daily diet of Michelin Star-level restaurant food.
- edmcnulty101 4y agoI got the same feeling. Wish I had the luxury to tell my boss , hey I'm burnt out, be back in 6 months or so.
- bombcar 4y agoThe term used to be ennui in this case - but burnout makes you sound more like you’re “one of us” I guess.
- at-fates-hands 4y agoLast year I started cycling off of social media. I normally do 30 days on and then 60 days off. Rinse and repeat. Its definitely has re-shaped a lot of how I view my life and what's truly important and what's just white noise bogging my brain down. I'm not surprised by his move to unplug for an extended period of time. A lot of older people I work with (40-50's) are unplugging their social media, and starting to limit a lot of their screen time and their kids screen time. I feel like a pendulum is starting to swing away from being accessible 24/7 and always feeling like you need to be constantly plugged into everything.
- thecrumb 4y agoMust be wonderful to actually have the luxury to step away... I'm living the American dream - to work a non-rewarding job for no other reason other than health insurance. How do people manage these sabbaticals? Are they just wealthy enough so they don't need income?
- tylergetsay 4y agoIf a knowledgeable person on your team is burnt out and considering a new job, a long (paid) vacation can be advantageous for all.
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoMost managers don't have the luxury of being Gabe Newell from Valve. They'll just fire you as soon as you sound like your numbers are going down with some cause. Even if in the long run it'll be better, most managers only work at companies for 4 years, under VPs who only work their 6 or 7 years. The long term health of the team isn't a priority for anyone.
- mmmpop 4y agoThis is HN, you can just say "Gabe" and we'll get your point! :)
- MrDresden 4y agoI tried to quit 2 months ago due to burnout. My manager told me to rather go on extended sick leave, and contact him in 6 months if I felt like coming back.
- haswell 4y agoI just quit last month for burnout reasons. I’ve had my foot on the gas for…19 years. My management really wanted me to do the sick leave thing. My therapist would have backed me up if I needed proof. I chose not to take that offer because I didn’t want a timetable looming, and I wanted to be truly free from any pressure to return. The role was also very customer facing, which put me in a weird spot about what to tell the community. I think I might have been more open to it if I hadn’t already been there for 8+ years and feeling the itch to do something new. The door is still open, but I don’t have to walk through it. I sometimes have to take a minute to reflect on how good we have it in this industry.
- reggieband 4y agoI watch a lot of YouTube and a fair amount of Twitch. Sooner or later every creator talks a bit about their anxiety working in that content creator grind. On Twitch, taking a day off may mean losing hundreds of subscribers. Streamers are cautious about taking bathroom breaks since they can lose thousands of viewers during a short break. YouTube ruthlessly punishes creators that don't upload on a consistent schedule. I imagine TikTok and Instagram are similar. My guess is that Kottke has been living under a similar stress for 24 years. That has got to wear a person down.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
- nickelcitymario 4y agoPlease be sure to publish a confessional post the next time you're struggling and need a break. I'm sure we'd all like to give you the same love and respect you're affording Mr. Kottke.
- dahfizz 4y agoIf you're a streamer large enough to be receiving hundreds of subs a day, and so many viewers you could lose thousands during a bathroom break, you're a multi millionaire. It's hard for me to be sympathetic about how stressful their job is when they could retire comfortably at any point.
- mkr-hn 4y agoThey always have staff they pay with that money. It doesn't all flow into their pockets. It's very hard to reach that scale on your own.
- tmp_anon_22 4y agoIt seems many streamers can barely take care of themselves. With the money involved I'd imagine a large cottage industry of Agents, Marketers, Content editors, and subsidies to friends and teammates who participate in their content. Not to mention a complicated tax situations, irregular income levels, periodic industry events, etc.
- Vox_Leone 4y ago>>> the plant is listing so badly to one side that the whole thing tips over without the weight of water in the pot It is listing towards the light of the window. All trees do it. Give it a 180 deg rotation and maybe it will straighten up. Good luck.
- gilbetron 4y agoFittingly, that tree seems to mostly need a larger place to grow, much like the author.
- gentle 4y agoI've been reading Jason every day for the last 20-something years. I love his writing voice and his perspective on the world. There's no other blog I read as consistently or as enthusiastically. I hope he gets the time out he needs from his sabbatical. I look forward to the next 20 years of reading his work.
- mkr-hn 4y ago>> "What good is a blog without a thriving community of other blogs?" This is something I feel every time I think about getting back into blogging. A post wasn't quite the scream into the void it is now. Back then you'd at least get a few views and a comment or two if you wrote something compelling. Sometimes a lot of views and someone you don't even know liking your words enough to share them.[0] I don't know if it's the context shift or the fact that newsletters are ascendant but drafting a newsletter doesn't feel as useless as drafting something in WordPress. Even with 0 subscribers. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719730
- lastofthemojito 4y agoI see myself in Jason Kottke's writing about burnout. I used to occasionally marvel that I got paid (and paid pretty well!) to solve problems in software. The past few years I've felt mired in Jira/Agile hell, working on machines slowed by corporate-mandated anti-virus and whatever other spyware, building software that is often thrown away due to unrealistic requirements or just plain bad requirements gathering. I've also become a father, which is obviously a time-consuming and stressful endeavor. Oh, and there's this pandemic going on, so I didn't get to see much of my Mom while she was dying, but I did feel like I saw some extra ugliness in society in general. I'm not sure which of these (or other) factors have contributed more or less to my feeling this way. I've been starting to think about taking some time off, although I'm not sure how much I'll be able to swing. But if there were a clone of me out there, and I could press a button to approve a 6 month sabbatical for him, I'd definitely do it. It's easy to look at the superficial and think, "man this Kottke guy had an easy gig, he doesn't deserve a 6 month break", but if he's feeling similarly to me, I don't begrudge him. Like the Chinese expression says: Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.
- staticcaucasian 4y agoI just want to say, every one of your bullet points resonated with me - work hurdles, fatherhood, aging parents, societal ugliness. Let me be your clone and perhaps you can be mine - go take the sabbatical.
- joemazerino 4y agoI've been a big fan of Jason since I came across his blog in the 2000s. I wish the best for him and his tree.
- kingnothing 4y agoI took a 6 month sabbatical and am just now interviewing for work again. It's been one of the best decisions of my career and I would highly recommend everyone who can to save up and make it happen for themselves. I worked for over a decade before feeling burnt out and realizing I needed to make a change. Fortunately I'd been saving for this for quite a while, knowing I'd want to do it eventually. It's been amazing to have time to myself to ponder what I want out of the rest of my work life, enjoy hikes in the middle of the week, work on a side project, level up my cooking game, and spend time with friends and family without regard for having to return to work at the end of several week long vacations. I'm eager to get back to work and am already looking forward to my next sabbatical and how it will affect my future self. Live a little leaner, save up, and take some time for yourself. We don't have much of it. Here's a relevant TED talk I found to be inspiring: https://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_tim...
- alisonatwork 4y agoI am just returning from a 10 month sabbatical, my second deliberate one in the past 5 years, and one of several career breaks I have taken since I started working in tech in the late 90s. I also highly recommend it. For me weekends and even annual leave doesn't reach the same level of relaxation that I can hit when I know that there is no job hanging over my head, and no countdown to when I need to return. (Running out of cash would be a fairly hard limit, of course, but in our industry it's easy to put enough money away to live without work for a year every few years.) One thing I don't feel is that these sabbaticals have necessarily been some kind of radical life-altering experience. I pretty much just did the same stuff that I enjoyed doing anyway, but I did it entirely at my own pace, with zero pressure or stress. I'm not really seeking enlightment, I'm just seeking peacefulness. As I am getting older, I am thinking that perhaps instead of doing my usual 1-2 years at a couple of different companies and then breaking, it might be nicer to have a consistent job that would allow me to break and come back. I have returned to two companies in my employment history - one after spending a year overseas, and another that I returned to part-time as a remote freelancer during COVID. Unfortunately I don't think many companies are inclined to offer this as a formal benefit, especially in countries where months-long parental leave isn't a thing. I suppose people who enjoy these kinds of sabbaticals and come back refreshed and hopefully more productive are still enough of a minority that it isn't seen as something that would be in a company's interest to promote.
- lqet 4y ago> My plant is not ok. That pot is too small for such a large plant.
- w4ffl35 4y agoSilkscreen was my go-to font choice for my blog back during the 9rules network days. Lots of memories just came back to me designing my site and using that font.
- ajb 4y agoKottke is not a blog I follow. I don't know why but nevertheless the domain feels reputable to me. I know I've read a small number of articles there over the years, none of which I specifically recall, but that must have been good enough that when I look at this domain I think "this is going to be thoughtful, not bombastic or trying to sell me something". Now I will look and see if this recollection is correct...
- prawn 4y agoI'm of a similar vintage and original web background to Kottke. I don't habitually read his site but I've been aware of him for decades and my wife is a subscriber. I'm my own boss, but where he got into blogging, I mostly stayed on the web treadmill which has been a grind for 20+ years. But while I work a lot and have a few struggling fiddle leaf figs myself, I don't feel burnt out. A few years ago I lucked onto a hobby that makes me some money but most importantly gets me away from the desk. I'm guessing he needs the same. His existence is browsing the web! A few minutes of searching would suggest some options: repot the plant, prune and/or notch it. Or depending on the house, move it outside. Or give it away and start another one or another type of plant. Because as others have suggested, the plant is the perfect parallel - he needs a bigger pot, he should get away and outside. Take the kids away any chance you can get. Organise a family trip with whoever can make it, because sometimes if you wait until everyone's available, you will be waiting for years. I'm assuming he shares custody of the kids which might tie him down a bit, but other than that, if anyone has the freedom to explore new pursuits and take little energising trips, it's surely a blogger writing about things they find online?
- wolverine876 4y agoOnly six months? That's not enough. That's trying to hold on, afraid it will go away. At least take a year, but really, just take off. Do your sabbatical - your time on the open water - but then move onward. Life is short; you will have very few opportunities like this one. You might not ever be as popular and successful as you are now, but you might, and likely in a completely different way. Your blog might fall apart even if you stay, and then what will you have? But for sure, you won't get many chances like this in life; the world changes, something will change in your life or your world, and the opportunity will vanish.
- mbfg 4y agoMore room for roots, and a bracing system will help. (and it will help the plant).