Massimiliano Mantione's Blog

This period shows no sign of stopping...

...but I should be over it :-)

This blog entry is mostly for all my friends that sow me "disappear" suddenly, from IRC and the web in general.

To say it flatly, I've been a bit "burn out".
I had too many things to face, all in a row, I did some mistake and they all summed up, so that in the end I lost a lot of energy...
I't pointless making a list of what happened since September (it would be too long, really!), but it involves:

• A long series of illnesses of my son: he has been able to go to kindergarten only four weeks in all these months, the rest of the time he was mostly ill at home, otherwise ill at the hospital (not just days, but weeks at a time)... anybody who has kids knows what kind of energy drain this can be.
• Some work-related stress, plus the fact that, while I was in Boston, both my wife and my son got ill (she had pneumonia), and they had nobody that could help them (all four of our parents were travelling!), so I was not really in a relaxed mood...
• Also, my mother died on December 1st, and while I took it well, it has not been relaxing, either...

Of course I know there are guys in situations much worse than mine.
Anyway, the major symptom of my loss of energy was that my working performance gradually dropped to zero. Which means, I tried to get things done, but had no results.

I finally decided to have a period of pure vacation, and generally take care of myself and get some rest.
The vacation helped a lot, in spite of the fact that, again, both my son and my wife were ill, so I didn't rest that much. But what helped me the most, ironically, is that I got ill last Friday! Whoever knows me also knows that I seldom feel bad (in the last fifteen years or so it happened three times, and before I hardly remember the details...), but this time it has been useful: mostly thanks to my wife, I spent three days literally sleeping, resting, and doing nothing at all!

So, now I feel better... today I am still officially in "resting mode", but I turned on the notebook anyway, and started working off my mail backlog.
The only sore point is that my son is still ill, and yet nobody understands what he really has. From time to time he seems to heal, the remedies seem to work, but then his situation regularly gets back to bad. This will keep us busy, and obviously a little worried, but at the very least I feel better :-)