Some of you may have noticed I disappeared a bit from the community over the last couple of weeks. Well, first of all, I've been on holiday. I was travelling through Iceland, admiring its breathtaking landscapes, enjoying nature (I saw whales, reindeer, and puffins!), trying local food, and bathing in hot lagoons.
During this road trip, I caught myself thinking that I did not want to go back. That maybe I would feel much more satisfied if I just stayed there and lived a simple life, herding sheep and admiring landscapes that look like the set of The Lord of the Rings, maybe doing some artwork in my spare time.
Since coming back, I've had this feeling that I do not fit in anymore. That the work I'm coming back to is not the work I used to love. Instead, I'm coming back to the work I started to hate; to the tasks I do not want to touch and that do not have anything in common with what I used to do.
Burnout in the age of AI
I've seen many articles about burnout since I joined the DEV community, and I've always been aware of the problem. I thought I was doing a pretty good job keeping a healthy work-life balance. But I think AI has introduced a completely different kind of burnout that I wasn't prepared for.
