One Year of Burnout
To start this off, I apologize for this article being a little all over the place. At the time of writing this, I’m recovering from a concussion and it sucks far more than I expected it to. I’ve learned the hard way that concussions are actually rather serious, for some reason I made it 25 years into my life not realizing that. Anyway, let’s move on.
In October of 2021, I felt burned out. For those who have had a luxurious life and haven’t had to feel such a thing, the best way to describe it is that you feel so out of energy that you can’t do anything, and when you do anything it actively feels like its doing damage to your mind and body. Now I’ve been through quite a lot this past year and have been steady at a full-time labor-intensive job along with working freelance on the side and trying to be there for friends and family, finally, my hobbies are by nature often stressful. For some reason, I feel the need to be productive at all times to build a better future for my wife and me, and my idea of fun is usually a stressful game or activity… so admittedly some of my pain rests squarely on my shoulders.
At first, burnout feels like you can’t do much, but too bad because you have bills to pay and must work a minimum of 40 hours a week. As time goes on and you work more and more regardless of your exhaustion, you will hit deeper levels of burnout that you never thought existed. This results in pain, sickness, and eventually internal exhaustion that would require days, weeks, or even a month of rest to fully recover from. But who are you kidding, you do not get such time off. Eventually, your body just stops being sick unless you catch some type of virus or eat something that’s gone bad. Your body seems to give up trying to tell you that you’re suffering and you’ll simply never feel energetic or healthy ever again. Some people cope with it with drugs, alcohol, or watching too much tv, or their life becomes a never-ending grind of simply eating, sleeping, and working. Never having a life or enjoying the fruits of their labor, dare I say a depressing and useless life. Of course, this often comes with the promise that your life will become better once you hit a certain milestone or get promotions, so if that’s the case for you, I’m glad. Sadly for me and most people, this isn’t the case. Is there an end in sight or a healthy way to live life while working this much? From my experience so far, that answer is no, but perhaps that’s just me being pessimistic. Everyone I know simply tells me that I’ll get used to it. Though it doesn’t seem like a healthy thing to get used to. Since I’m now concussed and am forced to lay in bed all weekend with an additional day off, my body has been given a proper chance to heal. Muscles, bones, joints, and just general pain throughout my body have made themselves apparent. Obviously, my head hurts due to the incident that caused my concussion so that doesn’t count toward my burnout pain. But what’s important to note here, is that almost all of this pain was not known to me before resting and sleeping for a few days straight. It makes me wonder how many people go years without a proper amount of time to rest and heal, resulting in long-term damage to their bodies. Of course, we all have eras of our lives where we have to work a lot in order to get a bit of a positive snowball effect financially in our lives, but I think it’s clear that things have been progressively getting harder over at least the last 20 years for younger and younger generations to get their footing.
I bring this up because I hope to somehow get myself out of this cycle. I’ve done well so far in life to defy the odds and carve my own path. Perhaps I can find a solution to this too. But most importantly, I want to use my resources to build a company that gives employees a life. My dream is that my employees will only have to work 30 hours a week while also making a living wage. I know it’s a hype dream, but someone has to try. Someone has to fight against the odds and make this more common. I’m tired of burnout, and I’m tired of watching others burn out and be stuck in a state of limbo just trying to make it to the weekend or the next long weekend since even a normal weekend isn’t enough sometimes. Wish me luck, and if you’re experiencing burnout, good luck. I don’t have a solution for you yet. If I did, I’d shout it from the rooftops. Cheers!
