Life as a Jobless Software Engineer

Before Being Unemployed

Before I update what life has been up to after being jobless for the past 3 months, let me give you some insight into how it was while working full-time as a Software Engineer in a fast-paced startup.

Few facts first:

• Was working remotely with my parents
• Have a toddler who will turn 1 next month
• Was doing some day trading early morning (9:15-10:30)
• Have a YouTube channel (although I do not post regularly)

What I want to say, life was pretty busy juggling between all the above things and working full-time. The typical day started around 7ish in the morning with most of the day skipping the exercise (usually it was not even part of my daily routine), getting breakfast and sticking to the desk around 9 am.

Taking some trades, losing some money and then starting to work on my tasks. Attending a lot of meetings (and when I say a lot, it was a lot, some days it was around 5 hours of planned meetings) in between many planned and many unplanned. Having lunch in between and then taking out some time to do some work.

Typically work day never ends because you have meetings and sync-ups with offshore colleagues, then go to bed around 11-11:30 pm. If there were no planned meetings, the evening was either play time with the kid or doing some research on something 😉.

Ah! I forgot to mention, I have a Siberian Husky, named Luffy who dictates his own schedule. 11-11:30 am is breakfast time, 3:30 pm is walking time and around 7:30 pm is dinner. So, I had to plan my schedule which suit his needs.

Weekends were usually household chores or doing some work on my YouTube channel. No wonder it did not grow. I won't bore much with more things which I used to do 3 months ago.

Right After Freedom

I have been working full-time for more than 10 years in a continuous cycle. The only disconnect I had was during my marriage - 1 month which was no rest and 1 month when I had my kid. Rest all the time, even during vacations or trips you are never fully disconnected from your work. In the back of your mind, there will always be a thought lingering on the task that's pending or what you need to do next for the promotion.

But this November, was a bliss. I was finally without a laptop - no Slack messages, no emails, not even personal work to be done for more than 3 weeks. I enjoyed the festive month like a school kid without any lingering thoughts of exams or work. And, then the laptop arrived.

Even then took things slowly taking time out for a more constructive approach to start anything new. Although I am still figuring things out which should take precedence the current schedule goes by as narrated below.

Finding the Right Schedule

As December was about to start, I started experimenting with different time blocks which will suit me more to be more productive. For the first time in years, I was free to choose whatever time I could because there were no morning stand-ups or late-night meetings to attend.

In the chill of winter, I decided to shift my schedule to early morning and by early I mean 2 am. The issue with this schedule was sleep time, as I planned to sleep around 7 pm but my son usually woke me around 9 pm before sleeping. Even though I followed the schedule from 2 am to 7 pm for around a month it was getting difficult to get a healthy amount of sleep.

And getting sleep of a minimum of 7 hours is a requirement for me now.

Right now have made a small change in my schedule to start the day around 4 am and wind down around 9 pm. This way the sleep issue is fixed and still I am getting 4:30 to 8:30 of Deep Work with a 30-minute break in between to take Luffy for his morning walk. Earlier it was better though with uninterrupted Deep Work from 2:30 to 7:30 in the morning (will move to this schedule once my kid starts sleeping early).

As health is another elephant in the room to address, taking walks with my dog twice and running on the treadmill takes care of 10k steps almost daily. Though I do not exercise daily, the day I miss, I take another 30-minute stroll on my lawn alone thinking about something.

Evening are usually chill - reading books, spending time with family and taking things slow. The only issue with this schedule is, that I do not have any job to meet ends needs.

My Thoughts

For the reasons stated above, this 1 year is crucial as with offices opening up, recession & layoffs happening and the pain of living in a metro city, I need to make some sustainable way of earning. I have some thoughts on what I need to do but taking things slow and this is what I was longing for.

For many people, it will sound strange and for some unfeasible due to financial constraints but for me raising my kid in a very fast-paced culture where I earn a lot at the expense of time which should go for family building was more important. On top of that, the time left to spend with parents is reducing day by day. On top of that, the pollution, traffic congestion, small space and big school is not my kind of thing where you spend five days of a week to live just two.

For me, staying with my parents so that both the young and old can grow together have fun in a pollution-free environment, and eat healthy without the traffic congestion in the home built by my parents. The path I have chosen will have some implications for my financial well being but this decision was not abrupt even though I have not reached my F.I.R.E number and based on the current trajectory it should be in some years, 😉 let's say!

Life is both easy and tough while having fun with its challenges of reinventing myself.