5 December 2025 by Phillip Johnston

Starting again after burnout is tricky business. As I said there, and as I will say many times, I fear secondary burnout and need to find ways to navigate work in a healthy way. I have been collecting a lot of my thoughts on that topic, but they currently still sit as a jumble of notes that I am slowly putting structure around. A series of posts will come in time.

I was especially struck by many of the notes I have received from my friends, colleagues, and reads in response Life After Burnout. I am encouraged by the support, but I am also disappointed at the state of the industry, that so many people are struggling in a similar way. I’m noodling on forming a community of practice around this, as clearly we need to work to shift the ways we work as people, companies, and society as a whole.

As for why starting again feels tricky – I have all this work that’s left undone. I have commitments I made in 2023, that I hoped to get done Q1 and Q2 2024, yet still remain unfinished. I have huge development backlog. I have so many half-written posts and updates that need to be made to the site. Hello, my old friend, the mountain of undone work! I feel the anxiety in my body when I look over all of this, and I understand the impulse of so many burned out people to give it all up and start over somewhere else.

But all of that is internal. The best place to start is where I’ve received actual requests from others, and that’s related to Abstractions and Interfaces.

Abstractions and Interfaces Work

I’m proud of Designing Embedded Software for Change, but with the benefit of time, I see that it probably would have been better structured as smaller, distinct courses. That would ease the burden of production and maintenance, for one, as having smaller, distinct components helps isolate changes. Which, for DFC, is a real challenge – it’s in a half-updated state, and some updates are completed but gated by yet-to-be-finished updates in other lessons.

I also think smaller courses are more approachable. You can actually feel like it’s something you can fit in with your working schedule. You can make meaningful progress with a small mount of available time. You can pick exactly what you need at that moment.

So, rather than having a single, comprehensive Abstractions and Interfaces course, I’m planning to create a series of related, smaller courses:

1. Fundamentals of Abstraction
2. Designing and Documenting Interfaces
3. Common Interface Design Challenges
4. Interface and Abstraction Design for Drivers and BSPs

These are still working titles, and the actual structure might change as I continue to refactor the material, but that’s how it seems to be trending at the moment.

Currently, I’m organizing the big jumble of notes and references I’ve collected into working outlines for each course. When I feel that organizational step is done, I will start the initial iterations of setting up the courses and putting together the initial outlines and structure for each.

If you bought the course already, don’t worry – you’ll be granted access to the full bundle of courses.

Eliminating Backlog

When I’m done writing for the day, I’ve been spending time clearing out my backlogs to reduce that feeling of pressure. I have deleted whole projects and hundreds of individual tasks from my todo list. I have cleared out emails I have marked to respond to for the past 2 years (I’m really sorry, everyone, I really did want to get back to you and life did not cooperate. You can email me again!). I have gone through Readwise Reader and cleared out hundreds of papers and articles I don’t need to read.

Wow, let me tell you, that is so freeing. I can feel the change in my body. Of course, at first I felt guilty, and I felt the hoarding tendency rise up – I really wanted to get to all this stuff! It’s still important!

And yet, I have to be realistic as to what I can do with the energy and time that is actually available. My desires clearly do not fit within the bounds of my life, and that is one aspect of burnout.

Easing Back Into Development

I like writing code and solving problems. That’s something that brings me joy and exercises my brain. That’s why I actually do this work. Yet, as my career progressed, it seems that I was doing less and less of the part I actually enjoyed. I also note the push in industry to further automate this fun part of the job.

So, to practice doing what I actually love, I’ve been trying to dedicate time each day to writing some code. I started with some small tooling projects – namely, Obsidian plugins that support my workflows – and that has been quite rewarding. Certainly a good dopamine hit to do some programming and then feel the benefits spreading to other parts of my work!

What I’ve Been Reading

I really, really, REALLY enjoyed revisiting the papers of James Mickens. They are evergreen and ever-funny. If anything, they’re better with age, as we just seem to have gone further into the ridiculousness that he often highlights.

Baking in Process Improvements, by Jason Sachs, was a great overview of process improvement (using baking cookies as an example), the importance of working in small batches and making improvements, and the importance of capturing process notes and other problems. Amusing and insightful.

I’ve always enjoyed reading Ken Shirriff’s articles, and he put out a new one: Unusual circuits in the Intel 386’s standard cell logic.

Most of my reading, admittedly, has not been engineering related.

We recently finished reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson for our evening family reading time and moved on to The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Both classics and highly enjoyable.

I enjoyed reading Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones – a mix of Western, Native American, Horror, which was also thought provoking and touched on the inter-generational nature of trauma.

Learning True Love, by Sister Chan Khong, has been on my list for a year, since I took the Who is Thich Nhat Hanh? course offered by Deer Park monastery. I’m taking the course for a second time, which prompted me to read it. A deep bow to this woman, who truly must be considered a saint. I would feel content to have only a fraction of the bravery and compassion that she has demonstrated in her life.

I’m currently savoring Morning Night, a collection of poems by the recently deceased Reverend Dr. Larry Ward.

Sit With Me

Where are you running to my friend with your mind dizzy with the things of the world and your stomach bloated from too much?

Please stop, come home, sit with me in the cool night air listen to the sound of the garden trees in the silence of the night.

See the miracle of the spider web in front of your face with its luminous lines connecting heaven and Earth. Relax and enjoy your breathing.

One day everything we see, touch, feel, and imagine will all disappear. Smile while you are in the here and now.

Let all of your worries and fears float down the river of tears. No need to cling. Fluttering in the wind as prayer flags.