Happy Dev

James Brooks: 00:08

This is the Happy Dev Podcast with me, James Brooks. Hello, happy dev ers. Welcome to season 2 of Happy Dev. It's James here. Just a quick intro on this episode really.

James Brooks: 00:22

John Wyles and I recorded this at the very start of 2024. However, I then had laser eye surgery and after that I went on to give some talks at conferences. And so we never really got round to editing this quite as quickly as we had hoped. But it's here now and I really hope that you enjoy the new series. See you.

James Brooks: 00:43

Welcome, John.

John Wyles: 00:44

Hey, James. How are you doing?

James Brooks: 00:46

I'm very good. Thanks. How are you?

John Wyles: 00:49

Pretty well. Yeah. I feel free this year's getting off to a pretty busy start, but I'm I'm doing good.

James Brooks: 00:54

Good stuff. Yeah. It's been, a hectic year and a hectic start to the year.

John Wyles: 00:59

Yeah. It does seem to be. Yeah. I I was I was reading a lot of people on Twitter saying how 2023 had been this awful year. So kinda hoping everyone has a slightly better one this year.

James Brooks: 01:09

Yeah. I kinda think that 2023 was a was a really good year for me to be honest. I started public speaking in earnest, and, the only bad thing really was that I couldn't run the half marathon that I trained for. So Yeah. Hopefully, 2024 is, I get my redemption.

John Wyles: 01:26

Yeah.

James Brooks: 01:28

So, I kind of briefly introduced you at the start there. You're now a co host of Happy Dev with me. Would you like to just introduce yourself a bit?

John Wyles: 01:38

Yeah. Sure. For anyone who's listening, no. You probably don't know who I am. I'm not Laravel famous, that's for sure.

John Wyles: 01:45

I've been doing programming for about 16 years now or there or thereabouts. I think you stopped counting after about 15 years.

James Brooks: 01:54

All blazed into 1.

John Wyles: 01:55

Exactly. Yeah. I've been basically a freelance contractor for that entire time really. And I've been very fortunate. I've worked with some really great companies in that time.

John Wyles: 02:07

Some really nice people. Most recently I've been working with some of the folks at Titan which is quite exciting. But I've kind of reached a point I think where I'm considering a career change. Not so much because I've fallen out of love with programming but because I kind of feel like I want a job which is much more focused around with people. So I'm gonna be hopefully retraining or starting to train as a therapist, a psychotherapist at some point in this year if all goes well.

John Wyles: 02:39

But as part of that process I suppose I'm kind of looking for new ways to talk to people, to listen to people, to sort of understand how people tick, how they think, how they cope, which is why I got in touch with you really.

James Brooks: 02:55

That's really very much a journey of self discovery for you then in a way.

John Wyles: 02:59

Yeah. Yeah. It sort of feels that way. It sort of feels like a lot of things have kind of come together at once. Yeah I've been doing some voluntary work which involves a lot of talking and listening to people.

John Wyles: 03:10

So something like this feels like an unusual for me, but a kind of a natural next step as well to get more involved in that scene in the profession that I'm already working in. So

James Brooks: 03:21

yeah. Yeah. It's exciting you get to marry 2 hobbies or careers together in such a tight knit way, I guess.

John Wyles: 03:31

Yeah. I I have thought about that a bit over the last few months and I think broadly speaking I'm pretty excited like to have one foot in both worlds for the next sort of 4 or 5 years while I'm training or hopefully training. Yeah it feels like an unusual and sort of quite interesting opportunity to get a sort of a different a different view on both worlds almost.

James Brooks: 03:52

Definitely. And also, kind of selfishly from my side having somebody like yourself that's training to be a professional, like, psychotherapist and and so that's the right word, isn't it? Psychotherapist.

John Wyles: 04:05

Yeah. I mean, I don't I don't wanna sort of, make myself out to be something I'm not yet, but it's certainly an interest and something that I'm Yeah. Getting more and more into.

James Brooks: 04:13

Yeah. It's exciting.

John Wyles: 04:14

Yeah. So I know that after the first series, people were asking if you were going to get a chance to tell your story and your give a bit of your background. Obviously, it's a little bit hard to interview yourself, at least not without worrying everyone.

James Brooks: 04:29

I'm gonna log in for an hour.

John Wyles: 04:30

But, yeah. So we thought that in this first episode it would be a good opportunity for people to meet James Brooks and for you to tell people a bit about how you think about your own mental health and work and family and all the rest of it. So perhaps to kick things off for those who are less familiar with your background, maybe you could just start by giving us a bit of an idea about where you are in life currently and maybe a bit about how you got to where you are.

James Brooks: 04:59

So I'm a software engineer at Laravel now, which is a PHP framework and, like, developer tools company. Prior to that, I was the software development manager at a travel company for nearly 10 years. I left a couple of times, went back, I managed a small team where we worked as like an online travel agency. So that had its own sort of difficulties in managing people. And then, yeah, but I never went to university, I came straight out of college into a IT support role, and also did a bit of programming on the side.

James Brooks: 05:36

But yeah, that's it really. I've only ever really worked at 2 places.

John Wyles: 05:40

Just because I know it's a bit of an interesting story, how did you get your job at Laravel?

James Brooks: 05:44

Yeah. So Taylor Otwell who runs Laravel, he was recording his own podcast at some point and mentioned that he was maybe considering the idea of having somebody come full time to work on Forge, which is one of the Laravel services. And, having had his number on my phone for some reason or another, I kind of messaged him, I was like, hey, I'm super interested, I'll take the job. And then he's like, okay, cool. Come work for Laravel.

James Brooks: 06:14

And one of my favorite sayings in life is that if you don't ask you don't get.

John Wyles: 06:18

Mhmm. Or fortune faves the boldness in this case. Yeah.

James Brooks: 06:22

Yeah. And so

John Wyles: 06:22

Ask for a job, get a job. Exactly.

James Brooks: 06:24

And it's worked really well ever since. I've been here for 4 years now, coming up to, well, 5 years this year. And I love it. I've been able to travel the world, meet new people, learn a lot of things, that were, like previously outside of my domain. And, yeah, it's just very fortunate, very lucky to be in the position I'm in now.

John Wyles: 06:46

Excellent. So quite often, you kicked off the podcast with a question basically about people's own experience with mental health. So I just wondered like when you first became aware of your own mental health and what that journey's looked like for you.

James Brooks: 07:02

So I was bullied in high school. So for the international audiences, our high school runs from when you're 11 till 15, 16, depending on when you're born. And I got like severely bullied, physically, mentally, emotionally for years. And I think I became aware of my own mental health probably at like maybe age 13 halfway through that it was like really getting me down. I was like secluded working on like code.

James Brooks: 07:36

Like I had friends some that lived local to me. We lived in a, in a small village that was kind of isolated from the bigger town. And we had no real way of getting there apart from cycling, and it was like on the very top of a hill. So yeah, we had some friends and I took up like jiu jitsu, made some friends there as well. Jujitsu served 2 purposes, 1, me making friends, and 2, learning how to fall downstairs and get punched without hurting or getting hurt too much.

James Brooks: 08:09

Yeah. So I kind of learned about that and had a, I got very angry that the school wasn't doing anything about it and I had a counseling session. And the, the lady there told me that I have anger issues. And I was like well yes, I am very angry but not without good reason. Like the school isn't doing anything about this And, like, what what more can I do?

James Brooks: 08:33

I can't not be in school. So I was very angry, which isn't me as a person, but at this situation. And then, I left school, which was amazing. I went to college. I made loads and loads and loads of friends.

James Brooks: 08:48

I felt, like, loved and appreciated for the person that I am, which was nice. So Everyone has that kind of bit of anxiety, especially, I left college, like, 6 months early to pursue a career. And that was a bit nerve wracking, kind of going into a full time working position at like 19 whilst kind of still doing my college course as well to not throw everything away. And then, yeah, I had a I was in a relationship for like 6 years and that that was stressful, wasn't, In hindsight wasn't the right thing for me. It took me a long time to realize that.

James Brooks: 09:28

And then, yeah, my brother passed away, he committed suicide in 2018. And this is where things got like really difficult because, I lost my brother, and then a month later my first daughter was born. So I kinda went back to, eventually my wife convinced me that I needed to go back to therapy, to kinda talk about how I should deal with this like absolute whirlwind of emotion. Like on one hand I'm grieving the loss of my and the answer is you don't is what I found. You just take it as it comes.

James Brooks: 10:20

Right?

John Wyles: 10:23

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, either one of those, I I mean I can certainly remember what it felt like when my first child was born and it is quite an overwhelming experience. Either one of those two events in your life would have been hugely sort of emotionally challenging but both at the same time, yeah, I can imagine that would have been incredibly difficult. Well, I'm curious to know what your relationship was like with work at that point.

John Wyles: 10:49

I mean you were programming around that time I presume so, did you find work something that became almost an irrelevance? Was it something that you could sort of retreat into a little bit if you needed to? Sort of what was that relationship like?

James Brooks: 11:05

So programming has always been the thing that I find happiness in and when when my brother died I was off work for bereavement leave, which I had a couple of weeks, but I couldn't afford to spend more time off because I wasn't being paid, which is like a standard UK thing in many many companies. And I also had to then take time off, not I say had, like I've got this obligation that I had to live up to, but obviously, with my daughter being born, I was taking paternity time off then as well, which kind of has a scale of how much do you get paid, and my wife was on maternity leave, so I had to be at work. But I kind of think between bereavement and my daughter, I was in such a haze of emotion like coming up to her being born. I would I went back to work. I had to manage people that I Like, people management is hard.

James Brooks: 12:10

The company itself was hard. And finding a head space to be able to do one of those was incredibly hard. So often program it was was something I'd go back to but during this time I think I just kind of somehow managed to get my way through each day day to day. And if I'm honest, I don't really remember a great deal between that time. My wife said that I was like in the room physically but absolutely not in the room at any point for a few months.

James Brooks: 12:43

Like just we'd be having a conversation and I would just

John Wyles: 12:47

Just be zoned out.

James Brooks: 12:48

Yeah. Or not listen.

John Wyles: 12:50

Yeah. I guess more generally, I'm outside of that very intense period. Is programming something that relaxes you, helps you switch off?

James Brooks: 13:00

Yeah. It's changed. I think as I get older that changes. I enjoy it so much and I'm incredibly lucky that, my hobby turned into my job and I enjoy my job and therefore my hobby. But having now 2 kids and all these things going on, Laravel's very good.

James Brooks: 13:20

It's very easy going, but it also consumes a lot of brain power in the day. I do program on the evening, like once or twice a week, but I also quite like just getting the kids into bed, having food and watching TV and just relaxing. Yeah.

John Wyles: 13:38

I know exactly what you mean. I think I had a very similar approach. Like before kids I I would I was probably bordering on bit of a workaholic you know I'd wake up at sort of 7 sit down at my desk start doing some work You know work through large part of the day and then in the evening after I'd eaten I'd maybe do a bit more and I Think when my son was born I that just started that almost went out of the window overnight because you just don't have the time anymore and now that the kids are older often when it gets to that point in the evening you know when they've gone to bed and you've got like 2 hours to yourself, often the last thing I wanna do at that point, despite enjoying programming, is I was open a laptop and Yeah. Do what I was doing for the, you know, 8 hours or so during the day. So Yeah.

John Wyles: 14:21

Yeah. I think I think family life is sort of quite a big, break on on those tendencies. Yeah.

James Brooks: 14:29

Definitely. And I think as the kids get older, that gets easier because there's less stress like, at the moment, the kids are 5 and 2 and, like, every meal time is a stress. Every bedtime is a stress. So day to day is kind of, like, maybe a bit more time for myself, but who knows? I I I'm probably massively wrong.

James Brooks: 14:50

Well, you know, and I'm probably massively wrong.

John Wyles: 14:53

No. No. It does in fairness the the amount of time spent just doing those things you have to do every day you know the cleaning up I suppose as much as anything gets slightly less. But that leads me onto another question actually which was obviously you're a dad with young family and kids take a lot of time and energy. So how is your experience these days between juggling work, family life and your own health which I'm kind of including in that mental health and things like socialising and hobbies which is so important for maintaining good mental health.

John Wyles: 15:26

At the same time. What's your experience between sort of that balancing act?

James Brooks: 15:31

So since starting work at Laravel, it's definitely a lot lot better than it used to be. My previous role was very demanding and I didn't have a whole heap of free time. At Laravel, I work from home. So I get to see my wife and my youngest like pretty much every day, all day in some way. My oldest is now has just started primary school.

James Brooks: 15:56

So family time is nice, I get to I get to spend a lot of time with them. And I'm sure, I would be told otherwise for this, but I feel like I'm out once work's finished, unless something comes up, I'm now a lot better at kind of putting that to the side for the rest of the day. Maybe not so much on holidays. I I like to check-in. I really love my job.

James Brooks: 16:18

I really love the team and care that they're okay. And Mhmm. I haven't left any clangers anywhere. So I do like to kinda check in and make sure, like, even on holiday, like, how's everything going? Mhmm.

James Brooks: 16:32

But I do that also for my own mental health. I'm not worrying and anxious that I've broken something or that something has gone wrong and I can help, but I'm not there. Even though they tell me to leave it, I'm sure. And then health wise, I was running a lot last year. I was training for a half marathon then I got shin splints, so that put an end to that for a bit.

James Brooks: 16:52

Mhmm. So I did have some physio for that and the and the therapist was like, I mean, you I can't tell you not to run. Mhmm. But I definitely wouldn't run if I was you. And I'm glad she said that, to be honest, because I would've because I had trained so long for it.

James Brooks: 17:09

I'm very lucky actually, my wife is very supportive of everything that I do. So when I wanted to run a half marathon, I was spending a couple of hours out running, well at least a few hours a week, and and that got progressively more and more as we were closer. I do, I am a man of many hobbies. I like working with leather which I find very soothing. Just sat there, sewing like wallets together.

James Brooks: 17:35

If I ever get raided by the way, it's gonna look stack of wallets. Yeah. I find that very, mentally soothing.

John Wyles: 17:46

How should you get into that? That's I I don't think I've ever come across someone who says, yep. Do a lot of leather work. That's what That's a really interesting hobby. Look

James Brooks: 17:53

at that. It's professional. It's a proper wallet.

John Wyles: 17:57

Yeah. Yeah.

James Brooks: 17:57

So so I've touched on this previously, but I've never thought of myself as a creative person, until a few years ago. And part of that was I've seen people make wallets and, like, watch straps, that kind of thing. And I've always thought, oh, man, that's really cool. I wish I had the skill to do something like that. And all I had to do was just try it, you know.

James Brooks: 18:18

And the first few were terrible but I I just thought like, oh, I can't I can't sew. I can't design things, which is just stupid to think. But it is an expensive hobby to get into. Leather isn't cheap. The tools get expensive.

James Brooks: 18:34

So I kinda like thought, nah, I've already got enough hobbies, I'll just put it off. And then for my 30th, my wife's family all bought me this leather making kit and I've been obsessed since. Yeah.

John Wyles: 18:44

Wow. That's that's really cool. Yeah. It's always fun hearing about those little creative endeavors that people do that, you know, quite often you can go years without knowing that. Unless you go to someone's house and you see stacks of leather wallets.

John Wyles: 18:56

You know what I mean? You know, you can go kind of quite a long time without actually knowing that sort of thing about someone. So that's, that's really interesting. Are there any other major hobbies in your life that you use

James Brooks: 19:06

to unwind? I, like taking photos. Why I'm sending it to me. He's he's not that person. But I'm I'm learning there's a lot to learn with photography.

James Brooks: 19:25

Mhmm. But I do just like taking pictures, I think. That kind of came from when my brother died as well. I was looking for pictures and I realized that we didn't really take that many when we were doing things. So we've got all of these memories, but memories fade and then you're like, oh yeah, I did that thing.

James Brooks: 19:45

But I've got no nothing to remember it by other than that very fleeting moment. So I I do try and take more pictures now especially with having kids.

John Wyles: 19:56

Yes. I frequently take photos on my phones that I don't look at ever again. Yeah. You know? But the thought of losing them, I I did lose a phone, last was it last year or the year before last, and I hadn't updated my Icloud subscription or something So I lost about 6 months worth of photos back to it couldn't have told you what those photos were But I knew that there was a 6 month gap where anything that I would have taken of the kids wasn't there like say the memories fade

James Brooks: 20:19

Yeah.

John Wyles: 20:19

And you know there's probably a balance to be found between kind of an actually enjoying the experience rather than having a smartphone in front of your face.

James Brooks: 20:26

So I bought a, like, actual digital camera and to try and just make it more purposeful. And also, if I get my phone out and I see notifications, I'm more likely to get distracted. So I I got a camera, and then I got obsessed with doing that as well. So I was taking pictures more than enjoying it. And so now my wife reminds me to like, hang on, like, just take a step back, enjoy the moment, also

John Wyles: 20:51

Enjoy it first. Yeah.

James Brooks: 20:52

Enjoy it and capture it.

John Wyles: 20:53

And I'm

James Brooks: 20:53

like, yeah but she's a 100% right. But while I'm learning photography, I'm like messing with all these setting and I'm like I just made it harder for myself almost because phones are so good it just lift it up, take a picture, done.

John Wyles: 21:06

Yeah. I think that's why I've never really made that transition to having a proper camera just the extra effort it takes to kind of get out get set up. This is a complete tangent but do you remember the advert for the Apple I forget what it's called now what's the sort of face mask? Know, the ski mask.

James Brooks: 21:22

The visions.

John Wyles: 21:23

The vision. Pro. Yeah. And they had, like, a guy wearing it in this lovely family scene, and he was basically kinda capturing it on one of those things. I thought that's so dystopian.

John Wyles: 21:32

Like, the idea that your kids can't even see or realize, like, can you just yeah. It's bonkers. But,

James Brooks: 21:39

I feel like that anything is better than that, but it's coming out of a horror movie.

John Wyles: 21:44

It's it did. It really it really kind of made my skin skin crawl for some reason that I couldn't quite put my finger on but it just it just looked so odd you know but anyway So one thing I wanted to touch on was, you mentioned a while back you work from home. Do you work from home, fully remote, fully working from home?

James Brooks: 22:02

So, yeah, fully remote. I do currently co own an office, with some friends of mine. They run a Magento agency, so it's kinda nice to be surrounded by people that are like minded individuals. And often, like, as part of my job with Forge, we support servers that run Magento websites. So it's kinda nice, I can run over and be like, did anyone know what this is?

James Brooks: 22:26

Yeah. And likewise, they do some Laravel projects and I kind of help them out with that occasionally, give give them some pointers so that's been nice. But, yeah, 2024 I'll be just kind of working from home more. I feel like COVID has kind of ruined working from home. Like pre COVID, I was working from home and I'd go out and kind of explore different coffee shops or restaurants and just set up camp there for a few hours.

James Brooks: 22:51

And then COVID happened and no one went anywhere. In fact, everybody came home. And then not everyone's gone back to work, and so there's lots of co working spaces, which I'm not super interested in. But I also don't venture out to coffee shops and restaurants like I used to. Weather is a habit, and I've lost that because of COVID.

James Brooks: 23:10

I don't know.

John Wyles: 23:11

Yeah. Do you feel isolated at all? Do you I mean, particularly with the people you are actually working with and building things with, you you don't see them on a day to day basis. You're probably interacting mostly through something like Slack or, you know, the occasional video chat. Do you find that an isolating experience?

John Wyles: 23:28

Do you find that actually that's not too much of a problem?

James Brooks: 23:31

It's not too much of a problem because we use some software called Tuple, which is a screen power and remote application. And, last year, Joe Dixon, he joined Laravel, and he's in Norwich. So we're in the same time zone. We work on kind of similar projects as well. So we we end up kind of chatting on people and helping each other out quite a bit.

James Brooks: 23:54

But also, like, I can go to any of the other employees and just start a call with them if I needed to. Anyone would be happy to jump on. And I think the whole screen sharing, real time communication makes it a lot easier. So I don't feel as disconnected anymore, I think, since we started using that. But there certainly are days where I wake up and I'm like, I've got my own company again, maybe I'll go into the office.

John Wyles: 24:22

Yeah. Yeah. So when you mentioned you're gonna be working from home more often in 2024, what's that structure gonna look like? Are you gonna be going in a couple of times a week?

James Brooks: 24:30

Yeah. So, the circumstances of the office are changing, so we won't have the building to use ourselves anymore. So I will just be working from home full time. I do have a friend's office that I go into, twice a month anyway, to help out with something that they do. So not too worried, but I probably will get back into the habit of finding more coffee shops and just getting out of the house a bit.

John Wyles: 25:00

Yeah. I think modern sort of video communication makes life a lot easier in terms of having some form of connection with your teammates. But there's, from my experience at least, sort of very little substitute

James Brooks: 25:18

I also think that, because I get to travel quite a lot, speaking at conferences and just attending conferences, I get quite a fair share of human interaction in that in that case. It is very different to being in the office with people for sure, but I think I'm the kind of person

John Wyles: 25:43

out with

James Brooks: 25:44

them a lot.

John Wyles: 25:44

Yeah. That was actually gonna be my next question. In terms of sort of maintaining a social network outside of work, what does that look like for you, and how have you managed to maintain those kinds of connections, particularly post kids? You know, because I think that can be quite tricky.

James Brooks: 25:59

Yeah. So there's a close group of, friends that I have. There's 4 of us and their wives as well. So we see them quite frequently. They don't have kids, so they're a lot more flexible in in when they can see us and they often come to us as well, which we really appreciate.

James Brooks: 26:17

All non parents out there, if you can help your parent friends by going to them, oh, man, the amount of time and the stress you save, I'm very grateful. So we do quite a bit with our kids, but we also do days out, like, which go for a walk as a group or, like recently, we did a day out in Manchester, just the adults. We did an escape room, some food, and got the train home and that was,

John Wyles: 26:42

You all managed to find baby at the same time. Yeah.

James Brooks: 26:45

We have to book these things way ahead of time.

John Wyles: 26:47

Months in advice. Yeah. Yeah. No. That's good.

John Wyles: 26:51

I mean, it's, it's important to maintain those sorts of things. And have you lived where you lived for quite some time? Do you feel sort of you're pretty settled in the area that you're in?

James Brooks: 27:00

I've only lived here for, so I'm in Newcastle under Lyme, and I've only been here for 8 years. I've lived in Stoke on Trent before most of my life, and I was born in Southampton, so I've moved quite a bit. Am I settled? Yes. My friends are here, my wife's family is here, my daughter goes to school here, so, you know, all good.

James Brooks: 27:24

With my job being remote I can work from anywhere, I'm not tied here. Where we live now isn't our forever home. We don't know where we want to move to and that's made harder by having a kid at school now as well. Yeah. But I would move anywhere with my family.

John Wyles: 27:40

It's, yeah, nice to have that kind of attitude, sort of, your home is wherever your family are.

James Brooks: 27:46

I have I have said this to my friends recently. Like when we got back from Australia, they're asking me how it was. I was like, I'd move. And I'm very like nonchalant about the whole thing. But I do realize how hard it would be to make a move like that.

James Brooks: 27:58

And how much of an upheaval it would be to those relationships as well. Like, I would miss my family and friends, but that's not the only thing that stops me from wanting to move, you know?

John Wyles: 28:10

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Slight change of gear now, but, one thing we were chatting about in the run up to recording this was imposter syndrome, and how that plays out for different people in different ways.

John Wyles: 28:25

What's your relationship like with that?

James Brooks: 28:29

Big time imposter syndrome, big time. When I was managing the team, it felt very circumstantial, more than qualified to do so. I I hope I did a good job, given the limitations and situations we were in at the time. And there are things that I know I did during that time that I hope people remember. I'm proud of myself for how I handled them.

James Brooks: 28:57

But yeah, even when I got my job at Laravel, even to this day, I still like, yeah, I'm not good enough for this job. And then going into public speaking, standing up in front of and talking about a certain subject. No matter how well I think I know that subject, there's always gonna be somebody that knows better and that's ridiculous because there's so many people that don't know that subject and yet I'm just constantly doubting myself. What What if somebody asks me a question that I don't know the answer to and I'm on stage and I look like an idiot? I think I'm very good just like in life in general in disconnecting myself from whatever situation I'm in for a period of time.

James Brooks: 29:36

So, like, I do really enjoy giving talks even though I feel like a huge imposter and I get massive anxiety especially like when I'm like backstage ready to go on next. I hate that feeling. Yeah. But I I'll get to a point where I might, yeah, this is James that doesn't speak, and then this is James that does speak, and those two people are disconnected from one another.

John Wyles: 30:00

Interesting. Kinda like a persona that you sort of wear for the Yeah. Run up or duration of the thing that you're trying to do. I was gonna say, I mean, imposter syndrome can have the effect of stopping you from taking on those sorts of challenges and having those kinds of experiences completely I mean that's certainly my experience of it A big reason why I haven't done more, you know, in my 16 years of doing this job is partly because of those sorts of feelings, but they are enough to kind of clamp down enough that I don't do it at all. Yeah.

John Wyles: 30:28

Whereas for you, I mean, you're putting yourself in that sort of position where you know you're gonna be anxious.

James Brooks: 30:34

Yep.

John Wyles: 30:35

Yeah. Interesting that it doesn't seem to stop you from actually going ahead and doing those things.

James Brooks: 30:39

No. It used to. It very much used to. And now that I am working for a company, such as Laravel, where people know my name more, I do get more worried about putting things out and releasing things that aren't very good. But I also think, like, you're supposed to do something that scares you every day.

James Brooks: 30:58

And also, I enjoy it. Like, I do enjoy it, but I also hate the run up

John Wyles: 31:06

to it. Yeah. Yeah. No. I'm I'm pretty bad with the sort of build up to something like that.

John Wyles: 31:10

It's always far worse than the actual Yeah. Execution of the thing.

James Brooks: 31:13

I was recorded in Australia and I watched myself back and I was like, yeah, I don't recognize that person on stage. And I kinda said that to my friend who watched it with me and he was like, well that's who you are, like, when you're comfortable that is you. Yeah. And I was like that's so weird because I always think that I'm this different person and I'm very in my own head while I'm giving that talk. And I'm trying to be funny so that if well, if I can make somebody laugh in the audience, they're on my side, they don't want me to fail, that's enough for me.

John Wyles: 31:47

Yeah. I mean, that is that is almost always the case. You are very rarely in front of an audience of people who are actively wanting you to sort of, you know, die on your ass and Yeah. You know, never, never speak again. So, yeah, but it can be a very hard thing to internalize and, going back one step, which was you said that you enjoy the process of actually doing it, but, obviously once you have done something like that, you know, it can potentially open more doors and avenues for you down the track.

John Wyles: 32:15

So it's that you go kind of experience the more you do You still get the anxiety, but it's almost like a positive feedback loop in a way. You kind of the

James Brooks: 32:24

more you

John Wyles: 32:24

do, the more you can kind of enjoy the rewards of doing those things as well.

James Brooks: 32:28

Yes. Absolutely. So and then last year, I started giving talks at, like, conferences. Yeah. The first one I did was Laracon India, which had over a 1000 people in the audience.

John Wyles: 32:38

I know. That was quite something just watching the videos for those.

James Brooks: 32:41

It was amazing. They treated us like rock stars, and we had the best time you could ever ask for. And I think starting off there, I thought, yeah, a 1000 people, like, I can do this. And then you get up on stage and you're like, holy hell, that's a 1000 people. And it's the first time I've given this particular talk.

James Brooks: 32:59

And I was like, there was a lot going on. There was a drone flying around. There was some of the sponsor stuff was still going up. It was just like chaotic, but the room was so big. It didn't really matter either.

James Brooks: 33:11

And then since given that talk, I was able to go on to do Laravel live in London, from PHP, and then Australia, and then I've got more talks this year. Yeah. And also, I run a meet up as well, so I kind of host that, get up and talk to people. So it has definitely opened more avenues a lot quicker than I thought it would do as well. And like I say, I enjoy it so it's it's amazing that I get to have this opportunity to travel the world but also it's I find it very stressful as well.

James Brooks: 33:44

Yeah. But the reward is well worth the stress for me.

John Wyles: 33:47

Yes. It certainly sounds it. Okay. A 2 part question for you. Part 1, if you're actively looking after your mental health, what does that look like?

John Wyles: 33:58

And 2, how often are you actually able to stick to those things? How often you're actually building those habits?

James Brooks: 34:06

Yeah. So, I'm not really a person that builds habits, like, knowing habits. I have got some, like, things on my to do list. Each morning I'm supposed to complete the Wordle, which I do and I send that to my family and we compete, which is nice. And I do that most days.

James Brooks: 34:27

Like my longest trip was like a 122 days and then was actually when traveling to Australia, the whole time zone thing messed me up and I couldn't work out when I was supposed to Oh. Supposed to do it, so that that fell apart. In terms of looking after my mental health, I do tend to start running more when I'm not feeling so good. When I first started, I was so focused on pace and, like, running form and breathing that it was so overwhelming. I couldn't think about anything anyway.

James Brooks: 35:02

And then when I got to just it being like didn't even really think about the things I needed to do. Not consciously anyway. I'd come back and feel better, which is probably the endorphins and stuff. But, yeah, I tend to run when I'm not feeling so great. And I have recently started using an app called Ed Can Help, I think it is.

James Brooks: 35:24

And it uses, like, some noise that you listen to for 20 minutes. It's like white noise with almost a washing machine in the background. It's not pleasant at all. But I have found myself being able to work through some stuff that I have going on quicker. The guy, I I presume he's called Ed, he, he, in the first session, talks about the kind of how this will feel and if you're jumping around in thoughts, don't worry, just follow that pattern, let your brain go where it wants to go.

James Brooks: 35:56

And I did find myself at one point, like, jumping back to when I went to see my brother in the hospital after he passed away. I just found myself like in floods of tears, and I presumed that something had been eating away, that I just needed that cry. And man, I felt so good after that, like really good. And I I that's in that first 20 minute session, that wasn't even the only thing that I kind of experienced. I took the headphones off and I was like, alright, I need to do these things to make myself feel better.

James Brooks: 36:30

And I don't really remember thinking about them too much individually. Mhmm.

John Wyles: 36:36

That's really interesting. I don't think I've come across that before.

James Brooks: 36:39

Yeah. It's good. It's it is it is a subscription, which, like £40 a year or something. It seems like a lot, but honestly, it works.

John Wyles: 36:49

That sounds a little bit almost like a sort of form of mindfulness, but with some odd white noise kind of like doing something in your head at the same time. That's really interesting.

James Brooks: 36:58

My wife tried it and she was like, well, it just annoyed me for 20 minutes.

John Wyles: 37:02

Yes. I guess it might be one of those things that works for some people better than others. Yeah. Okay. I think, one more question.

John Wyles: 37:10

I'm gonna end on the question that you wrapped things up with in the last series. What makes you a happy dev?

James Brooks: 37:16

Family and friends. You can't really ask for much more than that, can you? My friends were there when my brother died. They picked me up, they looked after me, and, they themselves have all had difficulties over the last few years, we've all been there to support them. You know, my family, I've got 3 beautiful girls that I love a lot.

James Brooks: 37:41

Try not to tear up as I say this, that was unexpected. Yeah. And wherever they are, that's the only place that I want to be. So yeah.

John Wyles: 37:50

Well, you know what? I think that is a perfect point to wrap this up on. Thanks very much, James.

James Brooks: 37:54

Lovely. Thank you very much, John.