A Year of Burnout

Or, when to let the life vest do the work for you. First in a series.

Like many of you, I’m Burnt Out. Goals seem meaningless, tasks get postponed, nothing feels important. Healthy habits are the first to go because taking the time to workout out prep a meal or rest feels like an excessive luxury when everything else is so utterly urgent; however, those things don’t get done because they’re all clamoring for priority position and I can’t decide where to start. So I’m curious about how I got here and what to do about it.

I’ve felt this way off and on for a long time and only occasionally acknowledge it. In June of 2020 my adrenals were fried after a particularly grueling sprint, the true acceptance of this pandemic and the erasure of what I had envisioned of my life for the year, and the unabating horror of George Floyd’s murder, one in a long list of names we recount every time this happens, which is too fucking often. I spent the summer trying to get my head above water, but slipping at each try. Finally I decided to take a hiatus in August- I delegated volunteer tasks to the committee members, chose proxies for any votes that needed to happen, turned on my auto reply and did pretty much nothing. I was exhilarated with my decision, standing tall in my Boss Bitch Boots (truly, just the Adidas slides I kick around in my house all day; haven’t worn heels in a year; yes I’m sad about it), and that feeling settled into an auspicious calm that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. September threw me some curveballs that I was able to handle, and I added things back to my plate in the fourth quarter, and life returned to normal.

But it didn’t, not really. I’m not sure, because our way of life at the moment has so distorted my perception of what is okay and what is not. But I worked toward some goals, picked up some new skills, and proceeded forward, maintaining a carefully curated balance in my life of emotional consistency: nothing too bad, nothing too good, be gentle with yourself but also get shit done. Push yourself but dismantle the religion of hustle. Be a boss but go to bed at 7 if you need to. Get work done but also there’s an insurrection, an ongoing pandemic, a humanitarian disaster in Texas that shuts off power and water to your friends and then opens into beautiful 70 degree days like nothing ever happened.

I realized I’ve been barreling forward head down, trying to maintain a status quo, for a long time to avoid stress. But this morning I sat down with a writing prompt I pulled from the internet: How do you recognize when you’re close to burnout? and the bigger question that came out of it was Have I been burnt out for years?

For me, burnout is too much all at once. When I can’t organize the day to day in a manageable way. When the influx of expectation, tasks, responsibilities and commitments are too much to sort and categorize and check off the list. When I can’t think ahead, or even focus on the moment. How do I know when I’m close? Like the frog in boiling water, I only see it when I’m in it: I start fabricating excuses to not go to the gym or show up for that committee meeting or sending that email. Fresh fruits and vegetables shrivel in the fridge while I choose to order takeout day after day. A thirty minute lunch break turns into a few hours on the couch, watching Netflix while simultaneously playing solitaire on my phone. Time limits on apps are turned off, and instead of going to the gym after work, I crack a bottle of wine and shut down. The following day, tasks are still undone, but now I feel shittier and more panicked and have less time to give myself, so I waste it all in the vacuum of impotent urgency. Emails languish, shame sets in, scrambling takes place, but I’m not sure I have ever really pulled myself out of this cycle?

The constant in all of this is a desire to shut off. To not have to make the decisions, do the hard thing, be innovative, create in a void, push myself. I’m not quite sure why it happened, but it’s been a pretty constant companion since 2015, when I experienced the highest highs and lowest lows in my life, in the span of a few months. When I limped back to Austin after three lackluster months in Washington DC, trying to make myself the next Clare Underwood (yes, I know, all of it: three months is nothing, she was a monster and more importantly, a fictional character, also DC sucks to live there, I’ve sorted through all of that now, but I hadn’t then), I fell into a relationship with someone who never asked for accountability, never pushed me, never inspired me, and only asked that I also never do those things for him in return. This was, I believe, my first experience in life with the shut off switch. I’d spent so long pushing myself to excel- working full time while pursuing my undergrad, creating a successful life after being told I never deserved one- that the idea of taking it easy was a Siren’s Song and I just fucking went for it.

Fast forward five years and I’m wondering if I was just burnt out and didn’t know how to cope, so I developed all these habits that aren’t restorative as much as they are suspensions of reality, and no matter how hard i work or what new things I create, my coping skills are just off.

I want to start the day clear and excited about what lies ahead, and close the day feeling accomplished and fulfilled. Do people truly feel this way? All the time? How?

None of this is to say I am unhappy, because I am not. I love my community of friends and family, my partner and the life we are creating together. I am a business owner and have a future and have been incredibly lucky, especially in a pandemic, to be independent and successful and live a life I have curated for myself. But this all comes with a price some days, and that’s feeling overwhelmed with choices and really, really needing to hire an assistant. And yes, we are in a pandemic. Yes, there is onslaught after onslaught of outside disruptive events that knock us sideways, some more forcefully than others, but they fuck with our equilibrium all the same. I don’t understand the people now who are operating as if nothing has changed, I truly don’t.

There is always the possibility that what I’m describing is Third Quarter Phenomenon, or the decline in performance during the third quarter of missions in isolated, confined, and extreme environments, regardless of actual mission duration. Coined by NASA, it is a very real phenomenon experienced by its engineers after working on a project for so long, with no end in sight, even though it is within reach. This fucking pandemic, man. But it also makes me ask myself: what am I working toward? Am I just doing something to do it? What are my true goals, and am I working in a way that brings me closer to them?