I'm still here - a quick update

Hi!

Long time no see right?

I'm still here, I'm just not writing.

It's been 16 days since I wrote and published anything, and to be honest, I'm struggling to even write this, mainly because it's almost 11 PM and I'm pretty damn tired.

But, now that my time is fairly limited, I guess I have to get used to the idea that if I want to write or work on different personal projects, I may have to do it when I'm tired, because otherwise, I will never have the time to take care of the things I like.

Those who read the last update I published already know this, but for those who don't, there's a simple explanation for my absence - I got a job.

I'm not gonna mention the what, where and how, because those things are not as important in my opinion. What some of you may be curious about is the "why". Why did I get the job? Why not focus on freelancing as I did in the past.

Well, the reason is fairly simple - as much as I like freelancing and as much as I enjoy working on my projects, being a freelancer and relying on your passion to make money can be extremely hard and stressful at times.

The worst is when you work so much in order to sustain yourself that you start to get bored or to even hate the things you once enjoyed doing.

Luckily for me, I didn't get to hate what I was doing, and the only thing I got really bored of in the past months was working in Photoshop. I spent around two years working with that software, creating photo effects and all kind of little things so there's no surprise that my excitement for that type of work kinda disappeared lately.

Anyway, as I said, I got the job because I needed something different. I needed a way to sustain myself, to make some money. Sadly, freelancing wasn't that great for my objective. I was sometimes working 12 hours a day without great results. At my job, I'm sometimes working 9 hours a day, sometimes 11, but I have free days as well.

It is kinda stressful, but at least I'm receiving some money at the end of the month, an amount that can always increase if I do my work really well and I help the team with what they have to do as well.

The "worst" aspect of the job is that I'm... new to it. I mean, I never did what I now do, therefore, I have zero experience. That means it takes me quite some time to learn everything there is to know about the job. The worst part is that I feel really useless and incredibly bad when I'm not capable of doing something and one of my colleagues has to take care of that particular task.

The first two weeks were the worst. I was extremely stressed, I was putting too much pressure on myself and blaming myself for not being able to remember how to do everything my colleagues showed me.

Only lately I started taking it easier, relaxing a little bit more and accepting the fact that there is no way I can learn everything about the job in the first two weeks. I try my best, but I just can't learn that much that fast.

Anyway, the main idea is that the job is stressful at times, and because I was putting so much pressure on myself, the past two weeks were a nightmare. I was tired and miserable all the time, and I was never in the mood to work.

Everything's better now, even though I still don't have enough time and energy to work as much as I worked before. But, now that I'm trying to consciously accept that I cannot learn everything in such a short period of time, I'm also more relaxed, which means I may start working again on side projects.

Overall, this is good, I guess. Having a job means I'm wasting 9 hours a day in a place I don't particularly love, doing something I don't really like, but it's a temporary thing that I'm gonna do for 6 to 12 months until I can save enough money to move to a bigger city where I'll have more opportunities, hopefully.

Besides all that, after that period of time, I'll have some kind of work experience, which is gonna help me get hired in the future, some money to sustain myself until I find another job and even my own place.

All this means I'm gonna work less on side projects, like the Blender project, writing and, sadly, coding, but it surely doesn't mean I'm gonna stop. Truth be told, having a job is a little more... relaxing at times. I go there for 9 hours, but when I come home, I don't have to worry about it any more. If I wanna play some games after a tiring day, I can do that. If I wanna watch a movie, I can do that. I don't have to think about work 24/7, which is quite nice.

So, all in all, I just wanted to let you know what's been going on and why I didn't publish anything in such a long time. I'm obviously done with daily publishing for now, but I'm still gonna write and publish something once in a while. I'm still gonna work on the things I like, just not as often, since now I'm trying to be a "responsible adult" and do what's necessary for me to move to another place and hopefully live a better life.