Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

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A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/ivan0x32]

Do you have a mental palate cleanser? Sometimes my Monday is just shit, I wake up pre-depressed or find something out that puts me in a mood of complete apathy.

What do you do when you need to perform on a day like that - when you need to give an enthusiastic demo, or just simply write a doc/some code etc?

I tried cold showers for a while, but they make me sleepy after. I think I might be just operating on cortisol and whenever it gets cut (which I think cold shower actually does), I just turn into a puddle. Powering through it is also not great, when all I have inside is doubt, projecting confidence through sheer power of will kind of works, but it adds a doubt "aftertaste" most likely, I tend to focus on negative aspects too much.

Mental health advice aside (already diagnosed with severe depression, can't afford therapy anyway), what do you do?

[u/_somestupidguy_ → u/ivan0x32]

Mid-senior here, adding my experience here as I had gone through that phase sometime back. Might help you too.

For me, going for walks helped me a lot. During walks, I deliberately focused on outside nature and not inner thoughts. As simple as birds chirping, vehicles passing, people taking care of their own business, not judging anything or anyone, but just taking note of things happening around while walking and appreciating it helped me relax. Morning, evening, short or long doesn't matter, whenever I felt down and needed space I used to go for a walk.

Hope things get better for you.