lynds.dev

Hi all, welcome back to my site! Another 'hot minute' (9 months!) has flown by without a single update. A lot can happen in that time, as it turns out; let's see how much I can remember for this post.

This post got long, so TL;DR: I'm still burned out (but trying to recover), I now work at VYPR, I've taken a step back role-wise but excited to learn more, and I have a few personal projects and other posts I'm working on.

Burned Out on Burnout

Firstly, a quick update on the burnout situation - turns out it was a lot worse than I thought it was. I was hoping that once certain external stressors were out of the way (buying a house etc), then things would improve for me. Sadly, that wasn't the case; even after taking sick leave in February, I was still struggling a lot. Being totally honest with you, I think I'm still recovering! Maybe once my head is less foggy around the whole thing, that can be another story for another day.

New job!

First and foremost - I've recently started in a new role! I'm now a senior front-end developer at VYPR. They describe themselves as 'product intelligence solutions'; we allow companies to get the thoughts of their customers more directly to improve their products and services. It's very different to eCommerce! It's been a very exciting month and a half so far though, with lots to learn and do; I'm excited to see what the future brings!

Wait... Senior? Weren't you a principal before?

Well spotted, dear reader! That's right; my role previously was Principal Developer, so it might seem like a step back. Career-wise, it definitely is, but personally it feels like a small step forward. There were a couple of contributing factors to this: one, of course, was the burnout factor having a negative effect on my confidence and ability.

The other was actually due to job roles - a lot of Principal Developer roles that I found had requirements more aligned with full-stack developers, rather than dedicated 'front-end', 'back-end', 'systems' etc. skillsets. Of course, this is fine - you need what you need! - however more than anything this revealed huge gaps in my own knowledge that I need to address.

On that note, the dip back down to a Senior role makes sense - sure, I'm good at what I do, but now I have the opportunity to learn more. This may be selfish, but VYPR seems like the perfect place for me to learn lots of new things for me to progress, so I'm excited to see what the future holds!

Projects and future plans

Before and even during burnout, I've had a couple of personal projects on the go; they're not dead, just on the backburner. These include things like:

• Tailwind - I made a start on testing Tailwind by lifting-and-shifting this simple blog layout. I want to try a few more things before I start writing up my thoughts!
• Personal project rebuild - I wanted to make myself an online 'hub page' that would function as a personal blog and general 'dumping ground' for things like my art. I also played around with Tailwind for this, but I've not finished it yet! Again, may need re-reviewing.
• New project with friends - I've been speaking to some friends and am about to embark on a new project! I'm still waiting for some things to start the project proper, so I started scratching my developer itch and have made a start on a styleguide. There's some parts of it that I'm really proud of, so I might write up a post on that in the future.
• Favicons - I had someone send me a message asking for a review of favicon-creating tools, quite some time ago; this is something I do want to review and write up!

Wow, this post got long! When I started writing this post, I wasn't sure what to write; turns out I had a lot to say!

If you've read this far, thank you; if you only read the TL;DR, still, thank you! I appreciate that you've taken the time to check this out. See you soon! (Maybe!)