Hi everyone and @MJ DeMarco
I’m a 33 year old software developer experiencing a mix of burnout, bore-out and a midlife crisis. It’s not how I started my adult life though. I was a high school dropout doing one temporary shit job after another and worked my a$$ off to get where I am today. Because of financial struggles during my studies in my early to mid twenties, I was forced to become rather frugal and a first failed business (web development freelancing) also made me very risk averse.
So I took the slowlane. Getting a “decent job”, living rather frugal, investing in ETFs all in the hope that I can reach FIRE one day. Which… will be in my early 50s if I do the math. I’m from Belgium, so jobs don’t really pay that well after taxes. We do have 0% capital gains tax but that doesn’t remotely compensate for the high income taxes.
In the hopes to break out of this, I tried to side husstle my way out of the rat race. Always chasing the quick bucks. What if I become a YouTuber and sell some courses? I do a bit of this and that and give up quickly because it isn’t going anywhere. So what about doing a bit of side projects for others in my free time? Just selling my time for money. A bit more than my job’s money but still. It’s not going anywhere, it doesn’t scale.
After years of chasing the not so quick, quick bucks on the side, I did some though exercise. Why? Why am I doing this all? What’s the point? What is my life’s purpose? What will I do once I reach FIRE? And I know the answer, deep down I’ve always known the answer. It’s my 20 year old dream of game development. I want to entertain with a little subtle educational touch. Interactive storytelling that might make you think.
So I tried to pick up my game development hobby on the side once again. But work has been sucking the life out of me for many years. It’s like the frog in boiling water. I was getting burned out. I first thought it was because I’m just doing too much of the same thing. At work sitting behind a pc all day staring at code and then the same in my spare time. That certainly is a factor as well but it took me a while to realize that’s far from everything that’s causing me to burn out.
Now I’m realizing the bureaucracy, the office politics (as minor as they are at my employer) and the whole bullshit job thing are really affecting my mental health. There are periods with barely any work, yet I need to waste 40 hours a week and other periods I need work my a$$ off in these 40 hours a week, yet it doesn’t matter how hard or good I work, all I get is a 5-10% raise every year. It’s like I’ve been walking all this time with a little stone in my shoe. It’s like not that big of a deal, it doesn’t hurt that much. But then you keep going for miles and miles and that same small little stone is really damaging your foot. By the time you notice this, it’s too late. Then you have to go to the doctor and he tell you, you need to rest your foot until it’s fully healed.
Now I’m here, sitting at home (or hiking in the woods listening to audio books like Unscripted) too burned out to even do game programming, the stuff I actually love to do. But hey, for some reason my brain is still OK with doing other stuff like working out or studying about game design (the non technical parts).
I’ve had the realization, that for me, doing this on the side won’t get me anywhere. I know I can do it (developing a game from scratch). Everything I have done in the past 15 or so years is somewhat related to game development. Programming, designing, public speaking (= storytelling/writing), and so on. Besides all the periods of tutorial hell, making copy cat games like pacman and some mechanics prototypes, I’ve actually made one real and original game from scratch during my job.
Having a bunch of dedicated time and deadlines really does wonders. I was so happy for that period of 5-6 months doing basically solo game development at my job. All the research, the learning, the prototypes, the creative freedom I had. That was only about 30 hours a weeks, still had like 10 hours for meetings, code reviews and follow up of my junior co-workers, bugfixes on the side.
Anyway this post is getting quite long. One more thing I’d like to say is that no “sane” scripted person would ever say “Wow, what a great idea! Let’s quit your job and work your a$$ off for a year or two living of your savings to have a 4% chance of financial success making your own indie game.” The math just doesn’t check out, right? But if it were easy, everyone would do it and that would make it even harder to succeed. Besides, at the other side of the scale is the near 100% regret that I won’t have tried to follow my dream. What weighs more?
I’m a 33 year old software developer experiencing a mix of burnout, bore-out and a midlife crisis. It’s not how I started my adult life though. I was a high school dropout doing one temporary shit job after another and worked my a$$ off to get where I am today. Because of financial struggles during my studies in my early to mid twenties, I was forced to become rather frugal and a first failed business (web development freelancing) also made me very risk averse.
So I took the slowlane. Getting a “decent job”, living rather frugal, investing in ETFs all in the hope that I can reach FIRE one day. Which… will be in my early 50s if I do the math. I’m from Belgium, so jobs don’t really pay that well after taxes. We do have 0% capital gains tax but that doesn’t remotely compensate for the high income taxes.
In the hopes to break out of this, I tried to side husstle my way out of the rat race. Always chasing the quick bucks. What if I become a YouTuber and sell some courses? I do a bit of this and that and give up quickly because it isn’t going anywhere. So what about doing a bit of side projects for others in my free time? Just selling my time for money. A bit more than my job’s money but still. It’s not going anywhere, it doesn’t scale.
After years of chasing the not so quick, quick bucks on the side, I did some though exercise. Why? Why am I doing this all? What’s the point? What is my life’s purpose? What will I do once I reach FIRE? And I know the answer, deep down I’ve always known the answer. It’s my 20 year old dream of game development. I want to entertain with a little subtle educational touch. Interactive storytelling that might make you think.
So I tried to pick up my game development hobby on the side once again. But work has been sucking the life out of me for many years. It’s like the frog in boiling water. I was getting burned out. I first thought it was because I’m just doing too much of the same thing. At work sitting behind a pc all day staring at code and then the same in my spare time. That certainly is a factor as well but it took me a while to realize that’s far from everything that’s causing me to burn out.
Now I’m realizing the bureaucracy, the office politics (as minor as they are at my employer) and the whole bullshit job thing are really affecting my mental health. There are periods with barely any work, yet I need to waste 40 hours a week and other periods I need work my a$$ off in these 40 hours a week, yet it doesn’t matter how hard or good I work, all I get is a 5-10% raise every year. It’s like I’ve been walking all this time with a little stone in my shoe. It’s like not that big of a deal, it doesn’t hurt that much. But then you keep going for miles and miles and that same small little stone is really damaging your foot. By the time you notice this, it’s too late. Then you have to go to the doctor and he tell you, you need to rest your foot until it’s fully healed.
Now I’m here, sitting at home (or hiking in the woods listening to audio books like Unscripted) too burned out to even do game programming, the stuff I actually love to do. But hey, for some reason my brain is still OK with doing other stuff like working out or studying about game design (the non technical parts).
I’ve had the realization, that for me, doing this on the side won’t get me anywhere. I know I can do it (developing a game from scratch). Everything I have done in the past 15 or so years is somewhat related to game development. Programming, designing, public speaking (= storytelling/writing), and so on. Besides all the periods of tutorial hell, making copy cat games like pacman and some mechanics prototypes, I’ve actually made one real and original game from scratch during my job.
Having a bunch of dedicated time and deadlines really does wonders. I was so happy for that period of 5-6 months doing basically solo game development at my job. All the research, the learning, the prototypes, the creative freedom I had. That was only about 30 hours a weeks, still had like 10 hours for meetings, code reviews and follow up of my junior co-workers, bugfixes on the side.
Anyway this post is getting quite long. One more thing I’d like to say is that no “sane” scripted person would ever say “Wow, what a great idea! Let’s quit your job and work your a$$ off for a year or two living of your savings to have a 4% chance of financial success making your own indie game.” The math just doesn’t check out, right? But if it were easy, everyone would do it and that would make it even harder to succeed. Besides, at the other side of the scale is the near 100% regret that I won’t have tried to follow my dream. What weighs more?
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