Years back, when I was still in school and looking for a Summer job, I filled in for a temp position at my (now) uncle’s paint factory. It was a good wage, primarily because I was a desperate student and agency temps are more expensive. Each day I would arrive at 7am, push giant plastic bath tubs full of sheets of resin-like paint to a big grinding machine and collect the boxes of ground up paint it spat out the other end.

And it was hard! Eight hours hard labour with a thirty minute break. You’d lift and move maybe 4,000 boxes weighing 25 kg each, all day, every day. Not to mention you inhaled so much dust your sneezes looked like a unicorn’s rainbow fart. I got home. Would consume a plate of food so high it blocked out the sun. Sleep. More sleep. And then do it all over again.

After that Summer I came away with two realisations. First, hard work is it’s own reward. I had a nice wedge of cash and could beat anyone in an arm wrestling content. But secondly, pushing yourself every day was exhausting. Beyond the point of tiredness. But you would sleep, recover and do it again.

So when I started working in tech full-time, I figured feeling tired was the same. But it’s not. Physical exhaustion != mental exhaustion. Whereas before I could get home and eat and sleep it off, sitting all day at a desk presents a different set of problems. You can’t eat. You stuff your face and before you know it you’re Jabba the Hutt with a text editor. But what’s more insidious, what’s more crushing with mental exhaustion is that you just… can’t… stop.

Problems follow you home. You collapse in bed and all you can see are variables and unit tests flashing behind your eyelids. There’s no off switch. Your body is fine. It’s ready and raring. (That’s one of the reasons I started running. Your mind clears and your body gets tired too.)

That’s why it’s good to have hobbies outside of your job. I might go home and keep on writing code, but it’s my problems. Fun things I know I can put off or not worry about if it all goes tits up.

I guess this is just a quick post to remind myself, sometimes you need to forget the code :)