Gina Häußge @foosel@chaos.social

Friendly reminder: This is my private Mastodon account which I also want to be able to read after work, during the weekends & other time off without getting dragged back into work 😉

See also: https://foosel.net/blog/2024-07-25-on-the-importance-of-time-off/

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Respect my right to have a life beyond OctoPrint, thank you 😊

October 28, 2022, 11:17 (UTC)

Contrary to what many people seem to think 😉 I indeed have a life beyond OctoPrint, and actually a lot of stuff I’m interested in beyond 3d printing (shocking, I know!). Yet a lot of people out there think that as an Open Source maintainer I’m available for anything concerning my project(s) 24/7. Even if OctoPrint wasn’t the incredibly stressful and intense, albeit amazing job it is, this wouldn’t be the case for me.

Even if we love what we do, we need rest. Our brains need a chance to get out of the usual daily routine and we need to get some dopamine boosts from a change of rhythm. Stuff that got learned, stuff that caused harm, stuff that needed a lot of thinking, all of that needs time to get processed. That’s why we (shouldn’t) work the whole day, that’s why we (should) have weekends, and that’s why we also (should) have vacations where we do something else than what we do day to day for a living.

What I learned from several close calls with full blown burn-out over the past ~12 years of maintaining OctoPrint is that taking regular restful breaks is probably one of the most important things, maybe even the most important thing, I can do for the long term health of both myself and my projects. That’s why not getting dragged back into work in general and OctoPrint specifically during my off times is a boundary that I will always defend hard².

And that’s what I can only recommend to anyone - maintainer or not. You have a right to restful breaks. And you cannot be at the peak of your performance if you are close to or already burnt out. Stand up for your time off! Fuck hustle culture!

It’s easy to only see the success and also to only share the success in our journeys. But success is usually just the end of a long path of struggle, compromises, setbacks, failure.

Over the years, I’ve talked about my journey a lot. About the kind of measures I took and continue to take to protect my physical and mental health from the effects of running a project like OctoPrint.

Sometimes you might find me posting a GIF on social media of me using a heavy bag in my office:

That GIF and the bag is a big part of my coping strategy and has actually spawned a whole talk (“How to deal with toxic people”) that I’ve now had the pleasure of giving a bunch of times.

I have been running OctoPrint for a decade now. It’s my baby, it’s a story of success for me. But it has a cost not many see.

Stress. A sheer ton of pressure on my shoulders. Sleepless nights here and there. Worry about funding, about retirement, about security, about the future as a whole. A strong imposter syndrome I have to combat daily (“this was all just luck and I don’t belong here”). Lots of set backs. Aggressive people. Burnout. A lot of “I’m not good enough” and “I’m not doing enough” and “I’m not doing it right”. And of course a lot of “I’m not doing enough to protect myself from all of this”.

It’s easy to put a smile on your face and radiate success and security and all that stuff we get drilled into us that we need to be. This is what you are taught to show the world. But this is just the surface. No successful project I know of didn’t have a price.

I would be lying if I claimed I have never just sat there and wondered if I should just stop doing this to myself. So far the good outweighs the bad and the ugly. I sincerely hope it stays that way. But never assume someone “just has success”. Everything has a price, nothing in life is free.

With that being said, I feel obligated to confirm that I am in fact ok, and you all don’t have to worry about me 🙂 (at least not more than usual 😉). I’ve posted this because I think it is important to talk about these things a bit more publicly, since it’s indeed way too often we only see the success and not what lead to it, what it cost or what it continues to cost.

I went into this knowing that I’d be immobilised for a few days, that I’d need crutches, that there’d be pain and also several weeks of physical therapy following the surgery. What I did not expect was how utterly impatient I would be with myself.

See, this was the first surgery I ever had as a conscious person. I did have two minor ear surgeries as a toddler, at two and four years of age, and while both of them make for my earliest (and quite scary) memories, I don’t have any feeling on how long recovery took, what it entailed and so on. And in any case, that wouldn’t have allowed me to judge what I was looking at with a knee surgery anyhow. I had read up on this of course. How I could expect full weight bearing of my leg by day two or three, and how I was even encouraged to try to really use it again right after. That there would be some swelling for a few days. In my mind this resulted in “I’ll be back on my feet with everything working in no time”.

Colour me surprised when I woke up from anesthesia to a ridiculous amount of pain, the inability to lift the leg, swelling beyond expectation and the information that there had been a so far undetected meniscus tear that had since scarred over. And thus began a journey of self discovery 😅

What this experience taught me has been eye opening. It turns out I have next to no patience with myself. Consciously I understood that the knee would need time to recover, that the swelling would not come down one day to the next and that I’d have to give myself time to heal. But at the back of my head almost immediately I started judging myself and falling short of my expectations. Here I am, a week post surgery, and feeling bad for still preferring to have my crutches in reach even though the leg is fully weight bearing again simply because walking without them feels utterly unstable and outright hurts too after one too many attempts at pushing myself. Here I am fretting over the inability to achieve full motion in the leg again even though it has gotten better day after day and I have been taking small milestones all the time. And here I am growing increasingly annoyed by my general reliance on help.

This surgery made me discover a new flaw for good that I had suspected to be there for a long time. I’m utterly impatient with myself. I have absolutely no problem with other people taking all the time they need to recover, to heal, to work through a problem, but when it comes to myself I have such high expectations that I’m absolutely bound to fail them and get frustrated by that. I’ve pushed myself through bad times before - my mental health did not thank me but yielded and I made it work somehow. My body however is not taking this kind of crap from me and showing me some strong boundaries right now, and that is an utterly humbling learning experience.

I wouldn’t say you should get yourself a knee surgery, because frankly this experience so far sucks a lot. But if you do, take it as a chance to practice patience with yourself. It’s what I’m now seeing myself forced to do and it was long overdue.

Over the years I’ve had some run ins with RSI and backpain. My first wrist issues developed more than 10 years ago. Pain in my lower back beyond “all fine again after a good night’s sleep” started in February of 2014. Both have been repeating visitors since then. You can probably imagine that that has led to a lot of research and experimentation to see what works and what doesn’t for me. So, here’s a summary of my findings as of March 2021. Quick disclaimer though, this is what has proven to work for me, that doesn’t mean it will work for you, if in doubt please consult a professional. Also, I do link to some products here – consider those references to give you more details on my setup, not official endorsement or anything like that.

Keyboard and mouse

For my wrists, ergonomic keyboards have proven to be crucial in combating the dreaded pain and numbness. I started with a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (what a name…), switched over to an Microsoft Ergo Sculpt, had a quick detour over a regularly shaped Ducky One TKL to get my feet wet in mechanical keyboards and these days have arrived at the 1st gen Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. It’s a mechanical split keybord, sized at 60% (which means it has less keys than your common 101-key keyboard, only 60% of them to be precise, and compensates for that with the use of layers reached through modified keys) and fully programmable. I’m still optimizing the macros I have configured on it. I got it with red switches (linear and non clicky, I can’t stand keyboards I can’t use while holding a conversation ;)) and put a Git-themed keyset on it which I absolutely adore. And it’s finally made me switch to US ANSI layout, which indeed is way better suited for coding than ISO DE. The UHK also supports some additional modules, and I have a trackpoint and an additional thumb keycluster on order once they finally release.

No matter how good you can memorize keyboard shortcuts (or how well the mouse layer of the UHK works), you still also need a mouse. In my case that’s been gaming mice exclusively for 15+ years now, with a ton of turnover due to wear out or quality issues. Currently I’m sporting a Steelseries Rival 310 after my last mouse, a Roccat Kone XTD, developed a flaky mouse wheel I couldn’t fix, even though I tried my best. Apparently a design flaw. The Steelseries has so far worked nicely, but I’ve only had it for less than six months at the time of writing this. It’s an asymmetric mouse tailored for use with the right hand. I can reach the side buttons easily and it isn’t too heavy or too light either.

I also have a trackball though, dedicated to be used with my left hand. Whenever I notice my right wrist acting up, I switch to exclusive trackball use for a while, and that has managed to still avert Bad Things a number of times now. If you find yourself regularly suffering from RSI issues on your mouse hand, I can really recommend to mix things up with a trackball on your left. Personally I got a Kensington Slimblade. It’s symmetrical and the buttons are easily remapped to fit a left hand operation. And the huge ball can also be used as a scrollwheel and is actually also a great fidget toy to have on the desk at all times ;)

Desk and chair

In my opinion, there are two pieces of furniture you should never cheap out on: your office chair and your bed. I bought my sedus netwin office chair right after finishing university in 2007 and apart from having gotten a bit more dirty here and there it’s as good as new. I initially got it with a set of arm rests, but quickly figured out that those were actually detrimental to my posture and made me pull my shoulders up, leading to tension related pain. So I removed them. I’ve also gotten it a bit more pronounced lumbar support through the aid of an add-on, the likes of which you can order online for less than 10€ a piece. If I were to buy a new chair today, I’d probably get one with a head rest to keep me a bit more from slouching during long debugging or gaming sessions, but all in all I’m still completely happy with it, and the mesh back has proven to make sitting on it on hot summer days more bearable.

I’ve now had an electric standing desk since January 2016. I’m currently trying to get into the habit of daily use of the standing mode again and so far it’s looking good. I got the IKEA Bekant desk, and have since modified it to use the alternative Megadesk controller to give it position memory slots (and hopefully also to hook it up into my home automation system long term). I can’t stress enough what a difference it can make to just stand for a while during your work day. Exclusively standing should definitely also be avoided (I’ve had to do this recently for a couple of days because my back would not take sitting for an answer anymore, and it did a bit of a number on my ankles and knees), but regularly switching between sitting and standing is a great way not only to keep your posture intact but also to just get back your concentration. I currently work sitting until my lunch break, then switch to a couple hours of standing before either returning to sitting or calling it a day.

Speaking of sitting and standing – I also recently acquired a bunch of accessories to make that more dynamic. While standing, I now regularly plant my feet on a balance board (a Gymba one in my case). It allows me to move while standing, to vary my stance more easily and frankly, it’s also a ton of fun to seesaw back and forth while working. I use it with shoes - you can also use it barefoot/in socks, but frankly that was a bit to tough a surface or my feet. Your mileage may vary of course.

I also got myself a wobble stool from Flexispot. Imagine a stool, but instead of being stable it has a rounded base that makes it constantly wobble around. You cannot easily slouch on that, you’ll fall over. Mine can be height adjusted from 61 to 82cm, so I use it both while standing as a small break, but also while sitting. I’m still getting used to it and am experimenting with heights and best way to sit on it, but it’s so far been a great addition and doesn’t take up much space (a serious plus in my limited office space).

Monitor mounts

Last but not least, I’ve got my two main monitors mounted on a dual monitor mount, in my case a gas lift one from PureMounts (the small third monitor is mounted to the second one with a self designed printed mounting solution). The stands usually included with monitors tend to not offer enough flexibility to truly dial in the position of the screen in my experience, and this also managed to free up a ton of desktop real estate that I can now utilize. In my case, a wallmount is not an option due to the standing desk situation, so I instead went for a desk mount. A gas lift is not the most stable option in my experience: things can be a bit shaky when I accidentally bump against the desk due to the rather extreme lever position I had to chose to make things work in my office, but it has been working just fine now since 2012. Still, at some point I might get something a bit more static. In any case, a monitor mount is something I’d highly recommended for everyone really, even if you don’t want if for ergonomic reasons – I cannot emphasize the increase in desk space enough ;)

tl;dr

Get a split ergo keyboard, a gaming mouse for your primary and a trackball for your off hand. Don’t cheap out on your office chair, seriously consider investment in a standing desk, get a balance board with it and finally reclaim your desk and improve your workplace’s ergonomy at the same time with a monitor mount.