I didn’t actually realize what was going on until it had been going on for awhile, unfortunately; I was talking to someone at work about the fact that all of us seemed to be operating under less than optimal circumstances lately and I wrote something like, “we all just seemed a little burned out,” at which point my brain went, oh, that’s it. You’re burned out. That’s what this is.
I had, to this point, been operating for a few weeks wondering why I was failing to have the same joie de vivre (which I have likely misspelled) that I normally had; I’d been feeling sluggish both in terms of feeling physically tired, but also emotionally under the weather, with everything feeling that little bit less exciting or even interesting than it usually did. I’d been ascribing a lot of this to the fact that, just weeks earlier, I’d had COVID and it takes time to get over that — something that is still true, it should be noted — but, nonetheless, had also been wondering why I’d failed to spring back as quickly as I had the first time I’d had the virus. Was this a stronger case? Was it just that I’m four years older?
The truth is, I realized when talking to my work colleague, I was burned out — a state that, in my mild defense, I’d practically trained myself out of recognizing back when I was a freelancer. It’s not that freelancers can’t get burned out — they do, and often — but that being burned out didn’t help when it came to meeting deadlines and paying bills. At some point relatively early in my freelance career, I convinced myself that because it didn’t “matter” on some practical level if I was burned out, then I simply wouldn’t accept that I could be burned out. There’s that entirely-healthy attitude I had back then.
Looking back on it with older, fresher eyes: of course I was burned out. I’d moved through three separate highly stressful work periods without a break, during which time I’d also attended San Diego Comic-Con and had COVID for a week. in addition to navigating whatever home life had been throwing at me at any given moment. (That list included the kid coming back from his summer away, and getting him ready for school, in addition to pet nonsense and other stuff.) How could anyone not be burned out, after all that?
The realization was something that allowed me to feel smug, for all of… a minute or so? After that, there was the inevitable follow-up question: how are you supposed to recover from being burned out when you have no less than two separate conventions to attend and report on for work in a two week period?