When Your Own Advice On Burnout Isn’t Enough
Dear Me,
It looks like you played yoself.
Thinking that you could write an article every week — LOL, who are you? Taking up new hobbies? Why? Most of all though, you haven’t written, not really. Not as yourself.
I’m reading all of your words across the interwebs and nothing in 2021, nay, nothing public online even sounds like you. That’s why I decided to take the reins tonight and write this letter to yourself, unfiltered, unedited, exhausted, and sober (what kind of a writer am I?)
Thoughts will be all over the place, fingers will not stop typing, and damn it you will not stop to edit. Even if you want to edit a grammar error. Fuck THAT. Fuck grammar. Grammar can take a hike for a night.
But anyway, I wanted you to take a watery-eyed look in the mirr — computer screen and get to the bottom of why you’ve been so burnt out and why oh heavens lawd are any of your techniques working?
- It looks like you’re eating and drinking better?
- It looks like you exercise regularly?
- It looks like you’ve somewhat figured out the stock market (okay don’t make me laugh)
It seems like most things are good.
But somehow for most of the day…do you feel like yourself at all? Or are you deep down somewhere under the layers of bones, nerves, skin, and pounds of mental exhaustion?
Remember when you wrote that poem about walking through the streets of Rome and feeling like:
This is it. This is what humanity, at its core, feels like.
Do you remember what you named it?
You named it: Ornamentation
Because what else could you feel like in comparison to the 800-year-old Douglas Firs on Vancouver Island? What other description could you give yourself when you’re walking on 2,000-year-old streets in Italia? Or when you’re at the top of mountains that have seen more rain, sunshine, and battles than you?
I guess what I’m trying to say is — when your own advice on burnout isn’t enough, you haven’t really tried everything. Not until you start to feel a little lighter in the morning and dream a little deeper at night.
When your own advice isn’t enough, remember that you’re just ornamentation. And the world out there is incomprehensible. So just take a breath, keep going, and enjoy the view.
