This was written in a single throw in less than one hour. I needed to make it that way, because otherwise it would have ended up in one of my daily journals. But for some reason, I wanted this to be public. I wrote that in my Kakoune editor, and no LLM was involved.

Waking up. Eating. Having a nice specialty hand-made espresso. Working. Practicing sport. Socializing. Gaming. Enjoying hobbies. Playing an instrument. Going to bed. Repeat.

While can agree that this is the main life frame of many people out there, every part of that scheme might be slightly different:

Among all of those things, there is one thing that has suffered lately on my side: the hobbies part, especially my spare-time projects.

I have been running many FOSS projects on my free time. The biggest one of the current moment is definitly kak-tree-sitter (KTS). It has been mature for a while now and used by many people in the Kakoune ecosystem. But besides that, I struggle to find the motivation to move on with the rest of my projects. And I do think I need to talk about it.

Am I burning out?

Lately, things have been a bit complex to me. I don’t want to leak information about both my professional nor private life, but let’s say that I had better years than 2025 and 2026. So finding the motivation to get back at enjoying my spare-time projects is hard. I discussed that with a couple people on IRC, colleagues, friends. The only thing that I know for sure is that forcing myself to it is not going to be productive. So I try to analyze why I feel that way, and I start to see pattern.

I do believe that I am mentally exhausted. Work is complex, we have many dynamic projects changing all the time, and it’s been years I’ve known that it’s much harder to work on my own stuff after a long day of hard work; that’s no secret. However, I do realize that it worsened lately, and the main reason is manifold. Let’s say that I spent way too much time judging myself and putting a worth / a value of my person instead of my work through external lenses — and most of the time, it’s just plain wrong. I do not know to give too much details, but let’s say that it took me a long time to realize that, sometimes, I should stop listening to what people say about me, and just focus on feeling better and enjoying what I’ve always enjoyed.

Refocusing on what matters

I have always loved writing software. I have started the design of a systems programming language because I started to be dissatisfied with Rust — and after testing Zig numerous times (seem my blog entries on the matter), I stated that no language exists that solves all the problems I would like to be solved at the language level. This is exciting. But it’s also exhausting. However, I take it slow, and I also decided to stop blaming me for feeling bad:

See the pattern? Good. Because it took me months, if not years, to actually see it. I have been organizing my whole life around the concept of yield, around productivity. I do know now that a human being cannot withstand such a high pressure of constant output. I completely miscalculated an important aspect of my own personality: I, too, require breaks, from time to time. People at the wakepark know me for being someone who can tank in and fight through 4h of constant wakeboardings with barely no pause, no break, just pure anaerobic exercises until I can’t barely breath anymore. I am like that. I spent my whole youth as a race swimmer, where we were used to almost throw up after each training session because it was that intense. Yes, it might sound too much for many. Yes, it is a way of living with giant ambitions. And yes, it has started to consume me.

Lately, after landing amazing tricks on my wakeboard; after landing a nice design at work or on my spare-time, my only reaction was either: it’s luck, or: yeah it’s normal. But after a single mistake? A single fall on a objectively hard wakeboard trick? On a design that doesn’t work the way I initially intended at work? I feel worthless. I feel shitty. I blur the value of the person I am with the failures I go through, and completely disregard any achievement.

The burden

This is toxic, and I do believe it has had a really big impact on my mood in the past few months. Not getting the recognition for my (important, cross-team, wide impact) work. Being on the neurodivergent spectrum — I am hypersensitive to others, with a « constant monitoring » kind of awareness of my environment, leading me to situations with friends I judged highly unfair while they completely missed the point in the first place and probably even forgot about it while I still relive the memories daily.

And then, there is the feedback I get from FOSS. A written feedback. People sent me emails. People talked to me on IRC. On Discord. I can’t deny all the amazing feedback I received about everything I’ve been doing. And sometimes, I realize how lost I can go and forget that most of the contributions I’ve been making since I started coding when I was 11 have been a good impact. Why would local mistakes or failures erase and replace all of that? Why is it so exhausting?

I decided to do some introspection regarding all of this after noticing that Wez has been away from its wezterm community. I do not know anything about Wez, what they are going through, whether it’s still happening, but I can relate so much, and I really hope they get better, just the same way I have started to feel better by just acknowledging the situation and just, you know, forced myself to realize that I am not a shitty developer, and that I should probably start listening people a bit less, and focus more on having fun. Go back to my demoscene days where I didn’t ask for feedback before doing something. I was just, doing things. And I think too much feedback leads to burnout.

Keep the vibes.

↑ The burden of hypersensitivity
burnout
Tue Apr 21 15:35:00 2026 UTC