Jenny S-T

Renay posts about Volcom work

Sanders posts about Board work

I guess I've had some of the same problems as Sanders and Renay here, in terms of talking about my work in the OTW, except one step worse because I haven't even been keeping up with Dreamwidth.

Talking about work and my mental state is difficult. I've kind of got out of the habit. As I mentioned on my personal journal a few months back, that's partly because it's not actually that bad. I look back to my previous project at work, and yes, the end of that was very tough. At the beginning of my new project, I was exhuasted and facing the standard challenges of settling in to a new area of work. I had a week's holiday in October and it was nowhere near enough, particularly with the OTW election on top of everything else. By mid-December I was seeing my GP about depression - it was the middle of winter, my SAD was hitting me worse than it had in years, I was overloaded with work and struggling to cope. And yet the hardest thing, in a way, was that it wasn't as bad as, say, 4 years ago. I have all my coping mechanisms for when things are really bad, but it wasn't like that. I had no coping mechanisms for mild depression, for balancing the days when things were okay with the days when things weren't.

Thing have improved since then. I got a good break over Christmas, and things have been looking up in terms of work. I'm still tired, but not nearly as badly. Spring helps.

But then I look at OTW stuff. We've made huge progress. I'm so pleased about the drive going well, and emailing the AO3 users. Our strategic planning workgroup have made brilliant progress, and I'm so excited that their post is up so you can all read about it. I am ridiculously excited about the Code of Conduct, because we need it so desperately. I have dreams for my role as Elections Officer next year. Open Doors has really got going and has big plans - Mishie is doing a great job as a new chair, after Heather had to step down for personal reasons. Support goes from strength to strength, and the AO3 Docs workgroup are getting going to improve the FAQs and other documentation. Finance has new people and is looking at improving their documentation, too.

But...there's always a but. I have reached a new level of burnout. I haven't coded anything in over two months. I spent two years reading every word of every transcript in the OTW Coders room on Campfire, and I've probably spent less than an hour in there in the past month. There are some areas where I can't bring myself to care anymore, because it hurts too much. I've said before that the thing that causes burnout isn't too much work, but too little support, and I'm finding the truth of that yet again. I'm seeing more different ways that well-intentioned people can hurt each other.

I still have hope. We're still making progress, and we can make things better. But it's hard work, and we lose good people along the way, and we can't solve it all at once. Please keep wishing us well, and please keep asking questions, holding us accountable, letting us know where we need to be more transparent, and above all, whatever your level of involvement, please remember there is a human being at the other end of the computer screen.