The August I Flared and Burned Out

“Flaring” is a term Brandon Sanderson uses in his Mistborn novels. Characters burn metals they have ingested to use their abilities. Flaring means burning through those metals in a short burst to push their abilities further. Prolonged use can cause irreversible harm to the body and mind.

Hi everyone. Somehow, I've put this off until September is almost over. August's newsletter was supposed to be “Did My Dream Come True at 29? (Part 2),” but so much happened that month that, just days after writing something down, I would feel differently about it.

I kept going back and forth between capturing what I was feeling in the moment and waiting until I had sorted out my thoughts. My outlook had already shifted once between the June and July newsletters. I didn't want to repeat that, so I decided to give myself some time to settle.

When I returned to Japan in July after getting my visa, I was full of energy. A dream I'd held for years had come true, and being back in Taiwan had given me a sense of having graduated from that chapter of my life. Now it was time to give life in Japan my all. I'd come this far; I wanted to show what I could do.

While I was in Taiwan, there were plenty of projects I didn't dare commit to because I worried they would distract me from getting to Japan. I did try a few things, but as time passed, I grew more anxious and gradually stopped doing things that had nothing to do with that goal. Even the newsletter only became something I took more seriously after leaving Taiwan.

But now I was in Japan. I could finally pick up everything I'd wanted to do!

That thought was where my burnout began. It was also one of the truths I'd avoided facing by holding up “moving to Japan” as my reason for everything: I can't do everything I want to do.

As luck would have it, opportunities really did come knocking while I was feeling so fired up. There was freelance work, an editor asking me to write, and a sponsorship opportunity through an open-source project I was involved in. These were all things I'd put on hold back in Taiwan, so I said yes to everything.

I'd worked for almost a month before going back to Taiwan, and things had been pretty good then. But after I returned with my visa, they took a sharp turn for the worse. I mentioned the challenges of my current job in the previous post. When I actually started working shifts in August, I found that my body simply couldn't take it.

Worse than working in the middle of the night was the way the shifts were scheduled: 4 a.m. on Monday, 1 a.m. on Tuesday, 9 a.m. on Wednesday, for example. My sleeping and eating schedules were completely thrown off. There were plenty of other problems too, but I won't get into those here.

Weekdays were nothing but work and sleep. On days off, I was busy with freelance projects, writing, and open source. The physical and mental strain kept building, but I had no time to stop and think.

One day in August, after finishing a late-night shift, I looked out at the brilliant sunshine. I clocked off while it was light outside, and decided to quit.

I still worried that such a short stint would make it harder to find my next job, and that my life in Japan might end just as it was beginning. But this wasn't a path I could keep walking.

Some people at the company could handle this kind of work. Before leaving, I finally got to talk to a permanent employee. He'd worked at an izakaya in university and was already used to working late at night. An American on another team was online almost all the time; his Teams status always seemed to be green.

But just because someone else can do something doesn't mean I should be able to do it too. I need to do the things I can do.

Rationally, I can make all kinds of arrangements and plans for myself. Actually following through is another matter. I was still afraid of quitting so soon after returning from a career break. The gaps on my résumé were adding up in a way that made me uneasy, and I wanted to force myself to hang on a little longer. But with each passing day, “a little longer” got shorter: until my visa renewal, then until the end of the year, then October. Finally, after raising it with my manager and talking it through, I felt that this month was it.

I used to think that being unable to do something meant I was useless. Now I'm starting to wonder whether a particular path simply isn't mine. Maybe I don't have the skills yet. Maybe I haven't put in enough effort. Or maybe it just isn't a good fit.

My body and mind are the first to tell me whether I can handle something. For a while, I couldn't taste what I was eating, the sleep scores on my fitness tracker were consistently low, and things started hurting here and there. I knew the situation had gone beyond what I could bear.

Truly Unoccupied

Leaving this job feels like being truly “without” something for the first time. During almost a year of working holidays, it was mostly work, with a little holiday on the side. In both Australia and Japan, my hours were basically those of a full-time employee. There wasn't much time off.

This time, I haven't lined up any part-time work. I mainly want to let things settle and think. I'll still be preparing for my job search and wrapping up other commitments, but I want to keep more time for myself.

I'd thought that going on a working holiday and having a big adventure would somehow make everything click into place. But if I don't take the time to think and let those experiences sink in, if all I do is passively absorb and experience things, there's only so much I can get out of it.

Recently, a talk called You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why. showed up in my recommendations. It explains that when we're bored and our minds aren't occupied by outside demands, the brain enters its Default Mode Network. In that state, we think about life's big questions, like “What is the meaning of life?” That kind of thinking can feel a little uncomfortable, but it helps us develop a sense of purpose and well-being.

Lately, when things feel painful, I find myself remembering my time in Australia. I was only there for four months, but I experienced real relaxation and happiness. Maybe that's because it was the time when I was most often bored, and most naturally accepted being bored. The Australian habit of sitting in the sun, especially, felt like the fullest expression of that. It reminds me of the “memory dividends” described in Die With Zero. Even though I keep having to explain the gap on my résumé in interviews, it was still worth it.

Reclaiming Empty Space

After returning to Japan, work took up most of my time. In the little gaps between things, I was also far too used to pulling out my phone: scrolling through social media, reading articles, manga, or novels. I filled almost every bit of empty time I had.

Every day, I took in huge amounts of information that wasn't necessarily useful. My head was constantly full of other thoughts and voices. Looking back, it was a pretty depressing state to be in.

Those habits didn't disappear when I stopped working. Free time didn't magically go “poof!” and appear, either. It still slipped away without me knowing quite where it had gone, and my emotions were still being pulled along.

Even if I can't change everything at once, a little progress each day is enough. Maybe that's what normal looks like. I've always been too eager to tear everything down and start over.

For example, I set up a block on social media and some entertainment apps so they would lock after I opened them more than five times a day. A few days ago, I was still frantically bypassing the limit and opening them twenty-something times a day. But as I write this, I've deleted those apps and only use them on my computer or iPad.

I'd already written about setting guidelines for social media use. And while doing physical work on my working holiday, I wasn't using my phone much either. Yet as soon as I returned to an office, it all fell apart. I think coming back to software development gave me a bit of FOMO. I wanted to keep up with AI, see how people were using it, and find out what was new. Before I knew it, I was caught in the whirlpool again.

Just as I can't do everything I want to do, maybe I don't need to know everything that's happening either. It reminded me of something I'd read: I Don't Want to Know What I Don't Want to Know.

And more important than social media is finding ways of taking in information that actually suit me.

I also want to cut back further on how often I use my phone. Reading Your Phone Is Not Yours made me feel even more strongly about that. I used to keep moving between note-taking apps; now I've rediscovered pen and paper. I carry a pocket notebook when I go out, write down whatever comes to mind, and only archive it digitally later if I need to.

For now, I want to reclaim some empty space. Let myself be bored, and think about Japan, Taiwan, being a software engineer, and what paths I might take next.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for still being here and reading this far!

This one is more of a life update, but I'm slowly figuring out what I want this newsletter to be. For now, it's a “public diary,” though I'll still write about specific topics too. I'll keep exploring as I write, making what I want to say a little clearer along the way. I hope you'll stay with me on that journey!

Even though I said at the start that I wanted to let things settle, I still hope I won't let myself skip the monthly newsletter too easily. It really does become a habit: July's newsletter was a day late, and then I missed August entirely. In the three months left this year, I'll try to get back into a monthly publishing rhythm.

Part 2 of Did My Dream Come True at 29? will be October's newsletter. I'll share some of the feelings I didn't get to here. Please bear with me a little longer!

Thanks to min, YA-Xuan, and 翰元 for reading the first draft and sharing their feedback.