If you had a clear skill gap and no free time in your current situation, would you take the risk of 6-8 months off to fix that skill gap with training, rebuild/rebrand, and then job hunt again?

The best bet is to get a job which allows you to fill that gap.

I would have a job where I can fill in those gaps or do it on the side of a job that is good enough to put food on the table without burning out or hating the workplace, etc.

I would fill the gap on the side, even now I'm working 9-5 and studying 6-11 (9-8 on weekends) so if you work from home it's doable

I’d love to hear the whole story in person.

If you can't improve on the job, the job is shit - it basically has to be an overload of low-level work. Because otherwise you would have either time to learn or would learn by doing.

@Oktokolo @sheriffderek I'm not learning anything new at this current job. Well, I take that back: I've improved on my old way of doing things when I get time to breath because I want this contract to go as well as it can. I know in my heart that I love development, but I never want to touch php or servers again. It's wearing me out fixing 'old shit' all the time.

I left an o.k. job for a very high paying contract where everything is due yesterday. It ends in February and I am burned out. I want to stop neglecting javascript frameworks, and I have dead Unity (C#) projects that I've neglected that I really miss working on. I'm not skilled enough to get anything related to my passion. But I'm ready to take a risk to build toward trying again while the job market is somewhat dead. I don't know if I'm being stupid doing that.

@CatFoodParty there's always a free time during weekends and after work. Unless your parents are rich then you can afford to do that

@CatFoodParty Yeah. A job can really suck up the time! It’s easy to say “just learn while you’re working” but jobs are hard. Are you setting boundaries? I’ve freelanced and contracted while doing passion project stuff - and barely made ends meet. Then I took 150k type corporate jobs - and in both cases - the money didn’t matter.

It’s the stress level. The team you have to work with. The sense of responsibility. It’s the hardest thing to learn how to manage.

PHP can be pretty frustrating. Try your best to enjoy the refactoring and find ways to write things cleanly. It’ll go a long way to help you stay calm.

Set an end-of-day / no matter what! Cutoff time.

It’s only another month. What job do you want after? Imagine exactly what those daily tasks look like. Build some little prototypes and start a series of attainable portfolio pieces that are specific to the tasks and problem solving of what you WANT to do.

@sheriffderek @CatFoodParty

Pick one thing for a while. Feeling like there are unfinished unity things doesn’t help. That weight needs to go.

Figure out a 2 year plan. Remove everything - (for now) that isn’t in that plan. You can always focus on unity in the future.

@Devnergy lol, emancipated from parents at 16. Just my money that I'd be living off of.

@sheriffderek Thanks for the advice. You're absolutely right. I'm not doing a good job at setting boundaries. If I set better boundaries, I'd likely have more time to make at least some relevant things for my portfolio.