A burned-out tech quit her job at a gaming company to spend time filming marine life. It helped her reset.

Daina Buchner holds a drone with which she takes pictures of sea creatures. Courtesy of Daina Buchner

• Daina Buchner quit her tech job at a gaming company last year over burnout concerns.

• Buchner, 39, now spends her days capturing videos and photos of sea creatures with her drone.

• The transition was tough, but it gave her time to reconsider her relationship with work and productivity.

Work can consume your life so much that it can lead to burnout.

That’s why Daina Buchner, a former San Diego tech employee, decided to quit her job — one she reportedly loved — at a gaming company to focus on one of her favorite pastimes: spending time in the ocean.

When not working, 39-year-old Buchner plied her trade as an underwater photographer, marine videographer, and licensed drone pilot — hobbies that have blossomed into passion projects over the past five years. Buchner’s thirst to immortalize aquatic life has led her to the hidden depths of the ocean. She has snorkeled in the kelp forest of California’s Channel Islands and explored marine habitats by boat in Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands.

During her adventures, she has captured underwater footage of a sleeping baby seal, a gray whale calf swimming with her baby by her side, and a winking manatee.

Leaving her job gave Buchner more time to delve into marine life. But despite the difficult transition, Buchner said she’s now starting to see her burnout disappear and is trying to adopt a healthier approach to work-life balance.

Daina Buchner touches a whale. Courtesy of Daina Buchner.

“At some point I just drove into a wall”

Buchner’s decision to take a sabbatical was years in the making. In late 2018, Buchner, who was working on a user experience research project, said she worked 50 to 60 hours each week, including weekends.

The time led to burnout, which Buchner described as “mental exhaustion”. Once home, all she wanted to do was take a mental look around by browsing Netflix and scrolling social media for hours. Her loved ones noticed and told her she looked stressed.

Everything came to a head in 2020 when the pandemic hit and she broke her foot. After taking time to undergo surgery and heal, she said she returned to work “physically and mentally exhausted.” At the same time, she said she needed “weeks or months” to change course on a project she’d been working on for years.

Her team worked hard and did well, she said. But that’s where the burnout really started to kick in. She fought through her mental exhaustion, thinking it would only be temporary, but the grind never stopped.

“At some point I just drove against a wall,” said Buchner. She decided to take a vacation last July.

“I realized that I just needed to take a breather and focus on myself, my outside interests and the close relationships that I have in life with my family and friends,” she said.

A whale underwater. Courtesy of Daina Buchner

Buchner said the first few months were tough. She said she’s felt “cycles of anxiety” about finances as she’s had to delve into her savings and readjust her budget.

“When I first quit, I was like, ‘Oh my god, did I just blow up my whole career?’” she said. “What if I have to go back? What if I’m having trouble finding a job? What if I end up on the street penniless afterwards? Did I just blast everything that was good in my life?”

The sudden change in pace was also jarring. There’s no sense of urgency to do anything, she said.

“I went from doing 110mph to a screeching standstill,” she said.

Buchner spends most of his time staring out to sea and has landed a few gigs on the side

Buchner — a veteran drone pilot and sea diver who has previously vacationed in places where she could dive — spent her newfound free time capturing photos and videos of marine life. She posted the clips of humpback whales and sea turtles on Instagram, an account she started 10 years ago, and on TikTok, which she created at the beginning of the pandemic.

Daina Buchner diving with sea lions. Courtesy of Daina Buchner.

As Buchner’s popularity grew in the ocean community — she now has nearly 90,000 combined followers on TikTok and Instagram — people and businesses began reaching out, asking for licensing of her videos. She helped capture footage for an episode of the Discovery Channel show Nature in Focus, worked with the Ocean Conservancy on a campaign to raise money for research into influencing conservation policy, and licensed video for a handful of documentaries and Miniseries on the environment.

She spends most days “staring out to sea,” waiting for a glimpse of an animal, such as a whale’s snout, so she can fly her drone over the animal and record its behavior. Depending on the speed of certain animals, she said, some days can feel meditative, while other days can trigger adrenaline.

The goal of this work, she said, is to help viewers “connect” with sea creatures and highlight some of the challenges they face, such as plastic pollution.

On vacation, Buchner now spends about five hours each day flying her drone over a beach or boat in San Diego and editing her videos; She spends another 10 to 15 hours a week working on her social media pages.

An aerial view of the ocean taken with a drone. Courtesy of Daina Buchner.

Quitting taught Buchner to “sit and enjoy” the present moment.

More than six months after quitting her job, Buchner said she’s rethinking the way she works.

Buchner found that she had a tendency to devote all of her time and energy to one project. As a result, she felt the need to be productive “every minute of every day.” Now she can “sit down and enjoy” whatever she’s doing, whether it’s reading a book or tuning in to Netflix.

Her greatest realization, however, was how rigid she had been in her approach to life. Like the ocean’s weather patterns, she realized that it’s impossible to plan everything and that despite life’s unpredictability, everything will turn out fine. It’s a mindset Buchner said she can apply to her job.

While Buchner loves her work protecting the oceans, she has no plans to pursue it as a full-time career anytime soon. She makes “some money” from it, she said, but it doesn’t replace the income she earned in tech, nor is it enough to pay the bills.

“I don’t know if this will necessarily become a full-time job,” she told Insider. “But I think if anything, it will always be a part of my life.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

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