the details aren’t super important and i’m not going to go into particular depth here but, in summary: i am on break. the burnout is quite bad. the “avalanche analogy” is pretty apt for what i’m dealing with here.
if you’ve never heard the “avalanche analogy” before, it is this: no individual snowflake is the problem, but the accumulation in an avalanche is still catastrophic.
individually, nothing i have dealt with so far―technical stuff, users, situations, arguments on here, etc.―have been issues that make me want to not use the site. the accumulation though is currently unbearable, even on this fairly small size. effectively all the time i―or any other admin, for that matter―am on here, i am being constantly paged with things to handle; people to sort out and placate; content to remove; bug issues to delegate; and all while having hundreds of people make contradictory suggestions to me i have to make sense of, balance, and generally hear nonstop while being expected to act like a service worker. it’s pretty draining!
accordingly, i have not logged in for about a week (or really done anything with the site, for that matter) and even thinking about it is exhausting. so things aren’t great. it’s pretty clear i need to extensively step back―which i’ve already been doing because i’d like to actually, eventually use the site i help co-run here again. i don’t feel good about just dipping without saying anything longer than i already have though, hence this post.
i’d ideally like to be back sometime next week, but i obviously can’t promise that. it’ll happen when it happens. please do not page me in the mean time with site stuff―it will be ignored.
thanks
I’ve been in that exact same spot, running a community and experiencing that kind of burnout. Where something you enjoyed managing just felt draining and like work, when talking about it was a dreaded thing.
And really, taking a break is a good thing. Don’t actively push yourself if you don’t enjoy it right now, it will only hurt you in the long run. But I will say this, I realized all too quickly that when my motivation came back after my breaks, the burst of energy was short-lived before I was reminded why I burned out in the first place. After 2-3 times of that cycle repeating, the burst of energy never came again.
To give a piece of unwanted advice, I think you guys might be stretching yourselves too thin. You’ve got a considerably sized site at this point, and not many hands to run it. I can’t speak for exactly what sort of help would alleviate it for you, maybe creating a barrier of a few community-level mods to help take on some of the bulk to leave the site admins with the sitewide issues. Maybe you could even look into getting another admin or two, if most of the issues are site-wide.
But I believe I can say without a doubt that the circumstances around the burnout will probably need to change before the joy of it is gone altogether.
I wish you guys the best.
we are talking stuff like this over but i didn’t put it in the post; more on that TBD
I actually think the best solution for a space like Beehaw is to just turn off the creation of new accounts for the time being. The point of this instance isn’t to be the biggest, it’s to be a high quality space. People will still be able to interact with Beehaw from the outside too.
Also valid. At the end of the day, the important thing is that the folks that provide the space don’t burn themselves out too hard. Whatever method they find acceptable to achieve that is perfectly okay.