this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore tools technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information that will expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome aboard the network engineering bus tour of the stars please keep all arms and oscilloscopes inside the bus at all times that one was for you lexi if you couldn't tell i know i was being pretty subtle anyway first up on your left we have the home of vxlan well that's the registered address anyway rumor has it she has an underground tunnel to the real mansion a mile away just across the street on the right here we have port channel park the kids love it because they've grouped all the slides together into one gigantic rapid shoot of fun now coming up also on the right be sure to stay off that lawn because we have the home of token ring this old man doesn't come out much anymore but when he does prepare for long stories of how he had to build networks uphill both ways in the snow for 12 miles finally to help keep the neighborhood safe we have the hsrp fire stations yes i said stations one is operational and screams at the other one just as it sits there all day long if the second one stops hearing the first one screaming it takes over as the active fire station all right folks here's the last stop welcome to the art of network engineering that was so good tim oh my god what welcome to the art of network engineering that was amazing um the intros are yeah the intros are back on the show um my name is andy laptop you can find me permit ip andy andy and uh gracing us with intros once again is tim he's at goat gland how you doing tim you know what sucks about this is nobody listening to this episode has any context of what that is and now i have to come up with some sort of a rebuttal and i got nothing uh tim's at tim's at timbertino on the twitter sorry tim inside joke how you doing buddy i love the intro it was amazing thank you it's it's good to see uh you andy and i know you haven't introduced lexi yet but hi lexi hey what up good to see you as well um i do got to call out something that uh that i've been using recently i probably said it on the show before but i gotta call it out again because it's awesome but i absolutely love using the chrome developer tools in in the web browser so what i use it for is it's great for troubleshooting like potential like firewall policy issues so if you know on on websites nowadays if somebody says they can't access something there's tons of different objects and calls to different sites so you don't know if somebody says hey i can't get to this thing you don't know if it's really the website in question or some call to some other destination somewhere but with the chrome developer tools you can just like hit f12 it pops up and it records like all the network activity so you can see when somebody clicks a button it'll pop up oh it's really trying to go here here and here and if it times out it'll turn red and everything which is really cool if you're trying to figure out what's the real destination because just looking through firewall logs sometimes you can't really figure that out easily so that really pinpoints it out it saved me multiple times so i felt like i had to scream it from the mountaintop damn you deserve that raise you got tim good job yeah that's super cool i want um i googled it just now it's good it's awesome i'm gonna look into that because like we had a we we were troubleshooting some third-party website where somebody was trying to log in um and like they could get to the site everything was up they put in their credentials and they just get an error that they couldn't log in it wasn't a bad username password or anything like that and when they the login process actually calls it to another website and you would have no way of knowing that um without having something that was telling you hey it's really going here and as soon as we found that we could figure out what the issue was and what was what was causing it in the firewall so yeah it's really handy i use it more often than i feel like i should have to wow how'd you learn about that just clicking on shit till it works that's been my entire career i i don't i don't remember i i don't remember what how i originally found it but yeah it's and there's like that's just scratching the surface there's a bunch of other tabs there but that's it like the actual network tab and it just records all activity um so yeah it's really cool good job tim i made my first uh powerpoint deck this week so i think you win in the technical arm wrestling match which is the intro to the show uh we also have with us lexi cooper at track it pacer also known as rocket girl how you doing lex hey i'm all right i had a pretty good day today uh i made a today today was sharkfest wireshark conference um i did a little presentation a small five minute thing on building mechanical keyboards for that so uh apparently people got some chuckles out of it which makes me happy so pretty i saw that on twitter like somebody's like i saw track it pacer at shark fest i'm like what she did she's not in kansas city what did you do in person but they were really sweet and and invited me to do like a remote i just recorded myself ahead of time presenting you know a powerpoint presentation on it so that was that was really fun um i think they upload them to youtube and like a big shark bites thing but i might upload mine my copy of it to my youtube channel as well if anyone's interested it is kind of a funny story um how i got into it so it was pretty cool to see today on twitter i really enjoy the stuff that you get invited on to to speak there was the there's like one or two podcasts like women in network engineering and then there was something i think with financial that i didn't have access to but that's really cool and then this you know i'm simultaneously happy for you because it's i i love you know i love learning from you so the fact that you're out there talking to the different communities is great and at the same time i'm also resentful because nobody asked me to talk to anybody about anything yeah but so oh same here same here but but hey lexi's part of a1 you're welcome too i will ride your coattails anywhere everywhere we are riding rocket girls what's the rocket they don't think trails fumes i don't know whatever we ride um what the the byproduct of rocket fuel yeah rocket exhaust there you go so it sounds like everybody's uh rocking and good but yeah that's that's awesome and i do miss you guys it's weird i i i don't feel like we see enough of each other i know we're going on this different recording and release schedule and to give us a little bit of breathing room but it still feels weird to me i don't get enough you know a1 time with you guys so i don't know maybe what's up what's up with you andy uh i'm good um six months into this uh plm job at juniper and i finally feel like i'm kind of getting the hang of uh of things i so you know not not to spoil i won't spoil our topic i'll i'll throw it out there in a second the couple things we're going to talk about today but um like most jobs i've had i've kind of felt at this place like a little over my head and i'm not sure what i'm doing and like oh god you know is this a good choice and like why am i here and like i think i could contribute but it's my my role is very business focused at least more than it's i've ever been and like i think i had an intro to business class at community college forever ago and i don't remember it and like you know i don't have an mba and so i love what i'm learning you know but six months in and i'm finally able to be a little less i guess anxious about you know my imposter syndrome right like oh my god they're going to find out and you know it's it's kill you with bull crap that's i am also yeah it's always happening and i feel you yeah so i mean that that might be a good segue i guess i mean i'm good i'm feeling i'm starting to feel better about you know my role at where i'm at it takes time right and i mean even if if i was doing straight network engineering at this job it still takes there's still an adjustment right if you're doing the same job and this is just such a different type of role for me that um you know transition's hard change is weird right and you just gotta hang in there and uh michael had brought me in he's like you know you're gonna have to be uncomfortable for a little while and i'm like i can i can be uncomfortable you know when i'm i think i'm starting to come out the other side so it's one of my favorite things to do to tim well so that is a good segue into our topic right our topic can also make people mental wellness and keeping your head above water in general professionally yeah yeah i think high level right it's like kind of a mental health type topic so we had if you haven't been listening forever we had a mental health episode way back when which was um started by one of our members who was having a struggle and wanted to talk about it and we all thought you know what you know it was it might have been during covenant remember at the time we're all like yeah man like life's hard let's talk about what we're going through because up until then it kind of felt like i don't want to say we were lying or putting on a show but like this is what you should do and this is great networking like everything's great and the vulnerability we had of letting people see behind the curtain like oh this some people are going through some stuff so it was a very well received episode i think it's something that you know we need to talk about more and uh it was brought up um so lex i mean i i was even just going to read unless you want to read the the tweet it was kind of perfect go ahead yeah so lex shout out today um a couple of questions for our netint fam on twitter um the so the one is as a network engineer have you ever seriously struggled with work-life balance and how did you decide to handle it um and then the follow-up to that was have you ever felt completely over your head at work and and how did you handle that too so for me these are like mental health coping mechanisms stress management kind of kind of topics right so i don't know who wants to jump in and how we want to get this started we got great responses to that tweet um i should maybe start with some of them huh yeah what the community said yeah i mean we we had a lot of people who could relate actually well everybody who commented there wasn't a single person who was like nope never had issues it's been great you know um a lot of people mentioned like in general families kids or significant others making sure that you had time with them became a struggle at a certain point right um studying can definitely get in the way of family time right i think um darren mentioned that he when he was studying for his ccie he was labbing seven days a week it caught up to him and he said he had to basically force himself to take sundays off with with no tech at all right so that he could spend time with his wife and you know just like get back to life i'm over here reading tweets like that thinking like oh i was i would have never been able to force myself to lab seven days a week like i i'm the opposite of darren so i admire that study ethic but you know studying and work i think we can talk about right the sort of mental health aspects of managing what that does to your life when you're really really intensely into something especially like andy and i we have new sort of positions recently and we've been you know getting very taking a while to get used to them you know getting a new job that can be a form of intense yeah sort of study i guess in in a certain way right like you have to learn the job and that takes a long time depending on what you're doing yeah um yeah we had a lot of great like responses having to do with this affected my family and that's what sort of jolted me into i had to step back right does that i don't know i don't have kids you know i'm not married i don't i can't relate too much to some of the family-centric stuff but i can understand it right i assume you guys can relate to some of this yeah yeah it i feel like you know there's that cliche line or whatever like the finest line anybody will walk is between career and and family and you know you don't need like a wife and kids to have like have family that you can be pulled away from you know right um and that's so true it's they're in direct competition of your time and we're you know we only have so much time and i i can tell you from my experience um and you know i i always try to be cognizant on how much of myself and my personal life i share on here because like you know i i don't want to come on here and let you whoa did you hear what he said like holy crap but you know i'll tell you that so that you know the topic of mental health right like i've been in therapy forever because you know i want to feel good and i guess i got stuff to to work on but my proclivity my tendency is to overwork um you know there's reasons i could get into which is what i mean about the over sharing but like you know there's a core belief for me that like i'm not good enough i don't measure up i mean it's definition of imposter syndrome but you know that this is before i ever heard of imposter syndrome and tech like this is how i always felt you know like as a kid that struggled with math and came home to get help and got yelled at like they're just our core beliefs of ourselves like for me right and i'm not a i'm not a shrink so like i have no business probably but it's just my experiences i don't feel i'm good enough as a core belief we all have core beliefs about ourselves and then i get a job and i tend to reach beyond my comfort level for jobs i used to have the easy you know i've worked at delhi counters i've been a registered cash right yeah like i've had the easy anybody can do jobs but then when i wanted more of a career i started reaching and that first job as a cable it was a hard job and it was very technical and it was a ton of stuff we had to learn to even get past these tests and stuff but i felt like an imposter early on and it's really because like i don't know if i'm good enough smart enough whatever enough to do this what that does to me and this is why the process of therapy has been so good as it comes to my awareness and not just i'm on autopilot all the time but i overwork because i'm trying to overcompensate to be good enough to be you know i want to level set and and rise to the level of the room right and i did it when i was a cable guy and i did it when i was at the knock and i did it in fintech and i don't think i've been doing it here so i guess i'm i'm making some progress but i overwork i focus too much on my career in the minutia of it and i get tunnel vision and then my relationships suffer not only with my wife and kids but like even with myself like i try to exercise every day i stop doing that when i'm overworking um i might be stressed out because i'm not sleeping good or i was on call or another maintenance window so now i'm drinking more coffee which then makes me jittery like it to me it's just this whole i start to overwork and then i stop doing things that i know are good for me start doing things that aren't so good for me and then wind up miserable and the people in my life aren't happy with me and then i'm in burnout and we talked about it before i burn out and wait a whole episode on it but you're saying yeah i can totally i can relate to all that yeah like that so you're i'm guessing don't let me put words in your mouth but what it sounds like to me is like just like everyone else who answered this your answer to the first question about seriously struggling with work-life balance is yes you definitely have and how did you decide to handle it it sounds like you're going to therapy you're actually actively working on that as we speak right yeah i i because i i want to be you know i want to be a good friend to you guys right i want to be a great husband to my wife and a great dad and like when i'm irritable and sniffing at people because they're getting in the way of me and my super important career that's not where i want to be right and i've and i've been there a couple times so and it's you know there's only so much you to go around right you got you got that pie you got a honey you know my old boss had another job you said i got 100 brain cells a day and when they're spent that's it and but i tend to think i can push myself harder and maybe i can get another 10 brain cells that day and and do a little more because it's it's just that internal drive to be as awesome as i can and like i mean when does it end right i have a great career i have what i need life is good this podcast is great like mike like everything's great but i still have this voice in my head that's like you could be svp someday go get that and like why you know what i mean like maybe but like i've been there six months and i'm ready to take the big guy's job because the crazy person in my head is like i think maybe with some time and help we could do that but like that is where i stop relating to you andy so yeah so i i've always been fascinated with with tim because he seems like he always seems so chill tim right i i have all this angst and i'm spinning myself upright and intermittently making my my family not like me because i think my job is so important but you've always just seemed like you have the balance thing down like you're just super chill you work and then you're done work and then your super dad super husband and like is that is there truth to that perception i have of you that your work life balance is just perfecto awesomeness so my answer to you is no i i don't perceive it as that um i don't i think i feel like i wear my heart on my sleeve but i really don't i mean there's been times where i've been frustrated and i think i'm visually and verbally frustrated and then five minutes later i'll talk to somebody that i thought i was being frustrating with and i'll say hey i'm sorry for how i acted back there and usually they'll tell me what are you talking about i i don't feel like you were being rash or anything like that so i i think my big thing is that i'm i'm hyper critical of myself um and really to start up by answering your question andy i i don't feel like i have it all together and that's why i was really excited to have this conversation because i don't have any answers all i have are questions when it comes to this topic people are always talking about you know the fallacy of social media that people really only put what they want people to see on on twitter on facebook what have you and i definitely feel the same thing and then i look at anything i post and it's like i i see you lexi and you andy post when you're struggling when when things are tough and a lot of times you know lexi i don't know how many times you you post stuff that's from the heart and that makes sense and you catch a lot of heat for it and i i don't ever do that um so i really wanted to use this episode to show to people that that no my life is is not perfect now granted i have tons of stuff to be thankful for and everybody in my life is good to me but i always have this nagging feeling that i can and should be doing more i spent the better part of two years getting half of the ccnp doing the enterprise core exam just busting my butt just thinking see the light at the end of the tunnel you'll get it i got it and i'm like okay the very next thing was i gotta keep going because i gotta finish i gotta take that second test and finish the ccmp and that was tough too because i was just putting a lot of pressure on myself to get it done and then i'm just like okay you get it done and life's going to be perfect you're going to calm down you're going to just take a lot of time off from studying and you're going to feel really good and i got done and it was awesome celebration time for a few days a week and then i just get that i don't know if it's like if it's me or if you know kind of talking to you and and seeing people on social media i think it's a trend with people in i.t is we have almost that addiction that we have to stay active we have to keep productive i think whatever that really means productive and showing value like i get up in the mornings and i start having these internal arguments um like immediately after i get up with myself saying um you know if one thing didn't go right the day before i'm already beating myself up about it and how are you going to fix that today and you really need to attack the day or it's going to get away from you and you're going to have a bad day and my my big thing is you know i should be thankful all the time and enjoying what we have like we just had the opportunity to move into a new beautiful home and i just feel like i haven't fully let myself enjoy it because i have this again this constant feeling that if i'm not being productive all the time or working toward that next thing i'm going to lose it all and something's going to happen i don't know what but something's going to happen and my career is just going to go in the toilet if i if i just stop and try to find some sort of balance and and i won't even call it a work life balance because um my employer is excellent at i mean we're not driven to work every second of the day and i i don't have um not to call you out andy but i don't have that that experience that you had um in previous roles where where you were working every other night maintenance windows you know that year that you worked um every sunday you know half of the year um i don't have that but i have that constant desire outside of work that tells me that most of my energy needs to be toward bettering myself in technology or i'm gonna fail and i'm gonna lose everything and um i'm gonna have failed my family at that point and i know i know that's ridiculous but i can't convince myself that that's ridiculous if that makes any sense and how can you not overwork if that's what you believe because i everything you're saying rings true for me right like and and technology like it's a tough gig it never ends there's always the next thing to learn it was it was automation it was cloud it was like you pick it right and you turn around and now you might be outdated like oh no i don't know the thing right and am i going to be out of a job is is it all going to go away i i have a sister-in-law as a pediatrician she's a big deal where she's at she's director she teaches at the college and so this is a medical doctor right she can save and has saved people's lives and they have like continuing education every year she she sits in a class for two hours she takes an easy test and she you know not to minimize what she does but we're learning constantly you know new technology stacks on nights and weekends and taking time away from our families to like i think part of this industry kind of breeds this i don't want to call it like hustle culture but like you have to always keep grinding because you're going to fall behind and it kind of happened to me in my technical career i was a route switch guy and they're like what do you mean that's it like what do you mean what do you mean what do i mean like that's the whole job and like oh you know you got no automation or cloud or devops or whatever the hell you know it it happened really quickly let me tell you what there are those of us who just stop when we when we're going through i'll just say this is how i act i i kind of give up instead of like you know when i feel that feeling of like i'm not good enough i need to work harder i usually just give up which seems counterintuitive but it's like i can't do it well enough i didn't succeed the first time it's over i'm done and that i admire you so much tim because you kept pushing through that ccmp i haven't gotten my ccmp yet because i failed in rc once and i just gave up now part of that was like i moved across the country like right after that and i just didn't have time to get back on the horse yeah you had a few things going on yeah my life got really hectic really fast and so at this point it's like if i get back into it i'll have to study all over again for that stupid test and i the thought of that makes me want to like dig a hole and just lie down in it right so uh that's part of it but some of us actually do cope by just like doing less and i hate saying that that's how i how i do but i am not like the hyper like get on the hamster wheel i'm addicted to certification i'm not i'm not addicted to certifications i love learning um do i have the drive to spend 12 hours a day doing it and like forget about my like life because i'm so into it no that's not me at all and i'm sure there are people like that out there that's not to say if you are that kind of person you're bad or like you're in you're crazy or something nothing wrong with that we just all cope sort of differently and and i want to give a voice to the people who uh are not like hyper productive okay because i just sometimes i just lie down and i don't get up after work and i don't i don't want to read about what the hell in fpga is okay like i know i know what it is but like do i want to read about how to program five registers and stuff to no i'm done i worked today i'm done that's it you know and and that's sort of this is this is coming from the person who knows more about ethernet than anybody work for the most part i do some streaming sometimes but i've even sort of let up on that too because it's exhausting learning new things all the time all the time all the time all the time so i i'm glad that you brought that up lexi that you you're learning that or have done a lot of learning around ethernet and you've done it at work um i spent a lot of my career and most of it's my own fault because i i would never bring it up with management until recently that that hey can i take work time to study for these things and and to better myself and i just i put most of it i do a little bit here and there on the job but most of it was early in the morning or late at night and i would just put that on me and that's my own fault so i i finished the ccmp in april i won deepened your own time wanted i basically told myself okay you're not gonna get uh with a certification for the rest of the year i mean i i had been hitting it hard for over two years trying to get the ccnp and i finally got it i said i'm not gonna dive in i'm gonna i need to take some time for myself i'm trying to andy i don't know how the fuck you do it i'm trying to learn guitar but i'm fucking terrible but i'm trying and um so i'm just i'm trying to take that time but i i got to thinking it's like okay if i give myself the rest of the year and i'm not going to jump into any sort of trying to study anything new whether it be certification or not um you know january of 2023 is a long time away i feel like i got to do something so i went and talked to my boss and said hey you know we've got some trends here that there's a good chance we're going to be looking into to doing some cloud stuff in the near future i'd really like to being in in the architect role that i'm in i want to start kicking the tires on high level cloud concepts i'm looking at comptia and that kind of thing and um i said i really want to get working toward this certain certification but i'm not really willing to put in my own time right i'm like what do you mean and he basically told me he goes now and he basically looks at me and goes well what are you talking about do it on work time you should be spending at least this is the same person that when i i didn't expect anything um financially from work when i when i passed the ccmp and he said at least eight hours a week work time working toward a certification and this like two weeks after i passed it he worked with hr and got me a raise i didn't even know so i i think he's trying to make an example saying hey if you're willing to put in the time to better yourself even if it's on work time i'll reward you and we'll give you the time to do it i spent so many years not even asking really if i could do that so that that's my own fault i just assumed hey if i'm studying trying to get a certification i'm not quote being work productive so i have to do this on my own time you know anybody listening to the show could go to their boss and their boss could say no i can't pay you to do that but at least you asked for so long i just assumed that i had to do it on my own time and now that i've asked that i'm like what the hell have i been doing for the last the last 10 years yeah yeah it is i think you i think it's just a lesson i i know i said i didn't really have any answers but i think that the lesson there is understand whether it's career related or not just that's something that i have personal understand the resources that are at your disposal and ask for help i haven't been the greatest at in the past and and maybe that's my secret sauce is i i need to do better at it just speaking up and not just assuming whatever's in my head yeah we had a lot of people on twitter um reply to our tweet asking about this kind of stuff um a number of people mentioned you know that they handled their overwhelming well the second question we had was how do you you know how do you handle feeling completely overhead at work right and and people a lot of people mentioned they talked to their manager they mentioned to their manager hey i'm feeling this way and worked with that person to cut down on their workload in some way or find a better schedule and a better work-life balance even was part of that right so i feel like one of the lessons maybe all of us can take from this regardless of where you're at in your career is set boundaries right you learn to set boundaries for yourself um in a way that makes sense for you and if you're in a place that doesn't allow you to do that maybe that's not a place you need to be because something that i'm seeing from a lot of people at various companies in various you know capacities is a big push from companies that know what to do for their people towards really emphasizing work-life balance because i think a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that if you don't allow your people to handle this kind of stuff then they're either not going to stay with you or they're not going to do good work or both right and absolutely it's a smart move for them to make so i mean i i'm also you know i've both of the places i've worked have definitely put a huge emphasis on okay we're gonna set aside this this chunk of time for you every week and you're going to be able to learn what you want just let us know what it is and go nuts right um and i think that's very very healthy it's a way to make you feel like you're not just working you're also learning and progressing with your skills but you're not having to take that time outside of work when it's really important to recharge and be with your loved ones right so when you ask that is that say is it too much work like my workload is too great or because like for me when i felt that way it was because i was reaching for you know higher paying jobs more responsibility harder jobs and i literally had almost no idea what i was doing that's that's what i'm talking about you know you're talking about like oh go to your manager and say well that's what i thought because i don't want to i want to make sure i have a clear because when we're saying like we'll just talk to your boss and maybe your workload is too great that's a different conversation than holy shit what have i done what's happening like when when the first day i worked at the noc i was a cable guy and the first day i worked at the noc i couldn't figure out how to log into a router like that's how that's how lost i was and now i have my ccna but the manager sat me down and he's like here's a term and i'll log in and i couldn't like i was having an anxiety attack i think i hid it well enough but i'm sitting there like oh my god i don't even because the technical interview i didn't do well in and they hired me anyway and then he sits me down and determines like log into a device i'm like ah because up until then everything was set up it's either a lab or package tracer gns or like cna labs like ssh to this ip address what's the password yeah and like what are my right what are my credentials and like what's my ad at this new job and do i put that in secure crt or like i just so i couldn't even log into a device and i'm responsible for like the whole country's like you know whatever i was doing there so that's a really hard thing to you know if if you're like me and and kind of like you i mean you went from a knock to freaking rocket ship networks that's not a small leap right that's a super woman like it's here i come like that's not a brag it's just it's right and it's real big that well it yeah and i've experienced not quite that you know uh dramatic i guess compared to you but i've been in those situations where i'm like oh my god what have i done you talk about imposter syndrome like now i'm working in prague yeah i don't i don't actually believe that andy i if i break something you talk about rockets with me like it's like you know like my my challenge is so much greater than you it's it's not i i think that i think that and i can't talk about specifics or i could make you feel a lot better all right but like i think we're actually we've got a different subject matter that we're working on you and i but like i think the like i guess gap of difference between like our previous knowledge and now what we have to have for our jobs is actually probably very very similar based on what i know about what your job is now like it's it's networking very networking adjacent overlapping but it's also like so much more than that um so don't don't don't think that i'm like don't put my knowledge level on a pedestal here you're gonna go to space somewhere that's all i'm saying one day i'll think it'll take you to sleep and i'll get up there so so so like similar to tim i don't have answers to that question when i have felt in over my head at work what have i done i think was how you frame the question i just have grit my teeth this is not advice i would follow but what i've done is i've grit my teeth and i've held on for dear life and i've overworked and asked a ton of questions and prayed in every maintenance window that i pushed to change i mean you know anything i could do and each one of these reaches has helped my family tremendously the first you know when i got a job in fintech we were able to get our our son into a nicer daycare which really meant a lot because the one he was in we're like eh like you know he's six months old like you know this new job like it so for me it's nice because there's a direct benefit to those that rely on me that that i can help improve the quality of our life but it comes with the price of like extra pressure anxiety like you talk about right and and you right so for me i've had to and maybe that's part of why i do all the self-care stuff but i i work on building myself up in a lot of different ways so that stress doesn't destroy me right um and so i can be nice and like tim had said a couple things earlier when he was talking like there's the i should be he's right like i should be this or i should be that and like it's it's it's hard to enjoy like what's happening and i kept thinking of like being present i do a lot of meditation stuff and it just happened to me the other day i i hurt my knee and i could walk for a couple days i was in crutches and i'm boohoo and all this stuff right and after two days of feeling sorry for myself i'm sitting out front on the porch watching the sunset with my wife and i go into like gratitude which is just another little like trick but i'm like god my life is so good look at this sunset i got a wife who loves me she's great the kids the house i got a good cookie yeah we did friends we did have a lot of people on twitter as well talk about gratitude meditation you know that kind of like like self-care right which is i love hearing that so what what uh what yeah what what i do is just do as much great for anything right because i i have to build myself up invariably because the stress is going to chip away at me and if you know if my baseline is low and i'm not taking care of myself and i feel like shit i'm not sleeping good and i'm too caffeinated and i'm irritable and then something happens i'm much more apt to be an asshole then i woke up and did a gratitude list i went to the gym i had a nice morning with my kids before work started you know there's a lot of that stuff you can do so that's the only advice if i have any that what i've been doing and what keeps me going because i keep putting myself in these difficult career situations it's just trying to take care of myself the best i can you know men mentally physically if you believe in spiritual stuff whatever like just anything you can think of to feel good like i just want to feel good and the better i feel the more armor i have when that shit comes you know what i mean and i'm like you know it you really have to uh it's a mental game right it's it's it's hard man it's a stressful job it's a stressful career and you know like you could press a button and take a data center down like holy crap who needs that stuff what about you too that's a hard job do any i don't know gratitude stuff i'm really bad at it so i don't i i'm honestly recently trying as i'm having like i'm in comments where i'm yelling at myself and those those internal art look where you are look where you've come in the last 10 15 years um in that mornings i've tried to stop and just say okay typically works for a little bit and then subconsciously i won't realize it but then 10 seconds later i'm back to the but you this is here because you worked your butt off and you're not doing that right now why are you andy i i appreciate maybe that's what i need i can't tell you anything right now that i'm doing that's that could be thought of as selfish doing that because if you stop now then you know it goes the world's going to come crashing down again so i um you not only mentioning the self-care thing but actually giving examples uh because of care um so so maybe that's that's what i'm missing and from the not and it's all self-generated right it's me i think i have to put that level of effort in because i do find myself more beating myself up because i feel like i have to do the next thing that i'm not doing and my day's not as productive as it could be that i i start getting down on myself and that's when i become snippy and i've got a wonderful wife and wonderful children that i've caught myself they've done nothing and i'm i'm a little short um and i gotta cut that shit out nothing to make me upset but for whatever reason i i've gotten mad at myself like for me um but i did i so yeah maybe i need to not maybe i know i need to figure out what self-care looks and hobbies count like you golf and that seems to bring you joy right like i mean you know yeah you it brings me joy till i take that first swing you look smiley you send us those instagrams you look happy and that's why i i wanted to display this because i i don't feel like i project that in any other facet of social media and again that's on me because andy you've known me for what i what i've been saying in the last half hour i don't feel like i've said in the last half hour has you thinking quite a bit different about me than what you thought originally we're going on two years now or however long and i i'm sure this stuff but it's comforting because knowing that you're having this i mean i think these are human struggles yeah you know this isn't like a tech thing this is i mean i think it's just the human condition and all of our minds work like they say we have like ten thousand thoughts a day and it's just crazy right and so i i like hearing that from you because you're like me we're the same you're here seriously and this is sometimes i'm just like how is this dude like what's wrong with me because he's just so chill and it's nice to hear that so professional on with us is is what that that's what it is because what what is it is it because i i always think it's just me what is it that drives it into your head that you're the only one and can i actually this is a great segue into a tweet that i wanted to mention not to be too like a millennial about this but um i have to call him out because he's so awesome um daniel deb uh on twitter he's daniel dibb swe um he tweeted a a little while ago i guess last week now um i'm just gonna read his tweet out loud a lot of you on here with platforms make it look like you're always working learning be aware that those that look up to you see you as superhumans that never take a break my goal has always been to share the struggle with you all we have a mental health issue in it i i that tweet is so good um daniel's really respected for good reason right um in in the networking space and i i really appreciate that he sometimes just calls it like it is right because uh it's important for us i mean he's got like what at least he's got a ccie a ccd after his name like he's a giant and it's important that we have people who have large platforms and lots of certs and you know influence in any way and that i think that includes us as well right like it's important to share the struggle and not just the like instagram-worthy photos of you with your like ccie or whatever right like that's all wonderful and it is of course great to celebrate your accomplishments but there's a good argument to be made a good discussion to be had about you know quote-unquote influencers or people who who have a larger reach right like what to think harder about what you're putting out there if you are actually here in any way to influence people to talk about tech to spread the good word of network engineering you should also think pretty deliberately about the things that you're saying the things that you're sharing about your own life um i i y'all know me i'm constantly always never ending struggling to understand everything i am never the smartest person in the room i'm often the dumbest one and that is really tough but also like if you share it i like to think that it helps right and that's part of what motivates me to do it yeah and it's why i love what this show has been able to do so much because you know there was the failure plaques right we have a whole channel on our discord that's just people failing exams or falling on their faith like just being human right being human is messy and i'm talking about mental health right and this is uh it's important i think it's about vulnerability right we got to tell people you know where you're at for a number of reasons and i think everybody almost everybody i know can relate to all this we all struggle with you know some form of am i good enough or impostor syndrome am i working too much you know is that hurting my relationships um but this is yeah i'm glad we're talking about this um someday we'll have to have a professional on who can give us some actual diagnosis medical scientific advice of yeah that's what i need oh god help us publicly be uh reprimanded by a psychology profession but i love what i love what daniel said and i hope we're doing a little bit of that and and it's it's a great reminder to to be vulnerable and let people know where you're at and you know because yeah you know we're all curating we all want we all want to put our best foot forward so to speak great even though it's a curated reality and that you know the next the next tweet from tim i see i want to see him like crying on the golf course and throwing his golf clubs across the lawn or like you know lexi throwing her her uh hummingbird thing down the street sick of waiting for the little facers but now you have such a cute doggie i love her she was snoring just a minute ago i had to meet myself anyway i will this might be a good place to uh what do you think well i wanted to sort of end because i had this thought a while ago and i feel like we talk a lot about gratitude and like sort of the softer side of taking care of yourself but i want to i want to at least add one more thing in here about self-care and how we can sort of manage these things something that's been the hardest for me to learn lately is setting boundaries but not just like oh i need less work uh less of a workload or i need to have this time after work to relax or something but i've had to actually set social boundaries for myself um i you know sometimes at work you end up you know encountering people who challenge your patients um especially if uh you're the type of person like me who asks a lot of questions and doesn't know what the hell they're doing ever right like i'm i'm gonna be real like i'm a an english lit major i do not have a formal stem education of any kind i have a ccna and half of a ccmp i guess right like that's it that is my i've you know that those are my qualifications and sometimes you go into a place uh where everyone has a phd in whatever right and you have to you have to sort of you know you have to not just believe that you're still worthwhile in that kind of environment but you also have to project that to other people otherwise they are just not going to they're going to pick up on that and not respect you so um you know making sure that you reinforce that you're a person worthy of respect in your workplace is also very important i think and sometimes when we get that imposter syndrome or whatever we unconsciously project that we don't think we're worthwhile and i think that can have an effect on the people around us even if they don't mean for that to be the case right um so i guess what i'm saying is don't take anyone's unnecessary shit okay like that's part of it well said and the way you talk to yourself and and about yourself is important because i've been called out in this role mostly by you know mike um whether i'm apologizing or putting myself down or saying i'm not smart enough like whatever it is right he was the first like you got to cut that shit out go read this book i know what i'm doing and you're here because of that and stop like you know but but i appreciate that i have someone in my life i respect calling me out like you gotta cut the shit out yeah right and you know so however we get there right he's helping me there's a book i read and and to your point i mean if i if i'm if i'm talking down about myself how can i expect my peers to you know respect me right so even the words i use i i've and that's happened in this show too you know i was i was like the dumb guy who didn't know stuff and then i was interviewing for jobs i'm like oh my god i can't i can't project that i don't know stuff like i'm a knowledge worker so i stopped calling myself the dum-dum on the show because i was doing that and i'm like this isn't good right so even the words we use but to your point likes that's that's that's awesome i i've i've really loved this episode you know this is these are you guys for getting vulnerable with me it's appreciated i this yeah this this was awesome um thank you so much guys um if you want to support our patreon program you can be on these uh shows with us and chat with us real time uh you can sign up at patreon.com forward slash art of nedenge we're on twitter at art of netenge uh where else are we we're all over the place oh the discord study group right uh artofnetenge.com forward slash iatj it's all about the journey i think we're up to like three thousand and something people right now as we record there's a jncis service provider study group my old colleague aldamacho is in there right now studying with some beasts and they're working on cert so whether you're just starting out whether you want to get into tech whether you're working on a ccie thousands of people all lifting each other up padding you know keeping us going when we fail certs and you know and pushing us along you know as we trudge this thing so um thanks so much for joining us um go do something for yourself write a gratitude list take care of your mental health don't look you know don't let it knock you down and uh see you next time on the art of network engineering hey y'all this is lexi if you vibe with what you heard us talking about today we'd love for you to subscribe to our podcast in your favorite podcatcher also go ahead and hit that bell icon to make sure you're notified of all our future episodes right when they come out if you want to hear what we're talking about when we're not on the podcast you can totally follow us on twitter and instagram at art of neteng that's art of n n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find a bunch more info about us and the podcast at art of network engineering dot com thanks for listening you