Burnout

Day 164 / 365

I declare I don’t care no more
I’m burning up and out and
Growing bored
In my smoked out boring room

This is the beginning stanza to an old Greenday song called “Burnout”. I used to listen to this song all the time in high school but after 3 years of doing a 9–5 job I think I am starting to connect to it a little more with each passing day.

Does anyone feel burned out? Burnout to me is having an overwhelming amount of stress, accompanied by the feeling of helplessness. It’s the feeling you get on days when you have too much on your plate and you don’t seem to be getting anywhere with anything. You have multiple tasks to do, all of which feel priority number one, and you feel like you have no time to finish any of them.

You switch between tasks frantically, leaving each one of them half done. At times you would just be blank. When the stress is so much that you choose to simply sit there and do nothing. That’s when you realize that things are surely out of hand, and this would surely end badly.

Then the blame game starts in your mind. You blame others for giving you tasks and deadlines. You blame yourself for being lazy and letting so much work build up.

You’ll try to divert your mind, maybe have a walk or listen to some music, but the voice in your head will still keep telling you to this is all just a waste of time and you are still not getting anything done that you were supposed to.

Actually, I am not sure what’s the next stage of this burnout process. But what I know for sure is that eventually, I have always come out of it. And if there has been any damage, it would be nothing as much as I would have been worried about.

Something that helps me to force my way out of feeling stressed is to write down the stuff that I am worried about. Then write out the stuff I think might go wrong, and what would I have to do to fix it afterward. Most of the time you will realize that there isn’t much to worry about, and if anything can go wrong, it’s fixable.

So I would end it with this, if you are feeling burned out, just remember that your life is much bigger than whatever problems you are facing right now. And in a years time, none of this will matter. So just stay strong and ride it out.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Carbon Monoxide — The Silent Killer