My Seventh Year as a Bootstrapped Founder

In the months after my son’s birth, I suddenly had no free time.

...

I took a breath and realized the reason I had “no free time” was that several days each week, I’d take long walks downtown to enjoy an outdoor brunch with my wife and son. Or we’d host visitors from out of town to meet the baby. I had to remind myself that these were all good things that I liked doing, and I was still in control of my time should I decide to resume working.

When I had my first kid, I'd take her out for walks, or we'd go to the zoo, and then my "free time" (aka time by myself) felt like it was slim to none. As with you, I went through a similar sort of realisation that I had free time and was spending it with my family doing things I enjoyed.

I eventually struck a nice balance where I'd still do most of that but also would carve out solid blocks of time for doing hobbies/learning primarily after the family fell asleep, where I might otherwise just be trying to relax some more.

When I was running TinyPilot, I didn’t have time for technical work, which was a bummer because I love writing software.

I’ve always loved programming, but I’ve never found it as exciting as I have in the last year. I’m awed by all the amazing open-source software that’s freely available.

Whenever I'm able to take two consecutive weeks off of work, it's like my brain STARTS the process of healing, and I begin to see a glimmer of hope that I could actually enjoy programming again. But then it's right back in, and the burnout and overwhelm is back immediately.

I realize I need to take extended time off work at some point before the burnout becomes much harder to heal from, but it's just never a good time. This year particularly feels so weird and uncertain.