Weeknotes #25

The stopping stuff one

Weeknotes 📝

Longform📜

In a tale as old as time, I burnt out by the end of 2025, and as has been tradition since peak pandemic times my festive break was accented with illness and bereavement.

Last year I neglected my wellbeing to my detriment. I gave too much of myself and took on other people’s stuff as my own in return. I spent more time worrying than laughing.

I didn’t have the energy for the things I usually enjoy.

This week I returned to work with a strong sense that things must be different in 2026, or I will simply not survive another year in this role, this industry.

Not-so-subtle foreshadowing means I had already started to stop some things. I called time on my community of practice, the burning embers of a passion project finally extinguished. I wound down my “bake off bakealong” Slack channel after a few successful years due to a significant dip in engagement. I bowed out of a networking circle. I stopped writing and publishing internal blogs. I hung up my Meetup organiser hat, and I don’t have any further facilitation commitments. I’ve stopped offering and the asks have stopped coming anyway - a sign of the times.

Ultimately I cannot fill my cup in the same spaces that drain it.

I’m not generally one for making new year’s resolutions but this year I have felt drawn if not damn near called, dragged even, to the word Community. Resolved to drawing firmer boundaries and finding better coping mechanisms to prevent letting my 9am-5pm taking over my 5pm-9am.

This year I seek community in my life outside of work and if I can’t find it, I’ll build it.

Eating 🍕