Week 15…

I have never needed to do that — not since moving to SF, that is.

Since high school, “burnout” was a thing that people talked about. In regards to the youth (at least the AP-class-taking youth that made up my social sphere), burnout was studying too hard, taking too many extracurricular activities, and wearing our backpacks incorrectly (I favored the one-shoulder sling for far too many years). The same thing was true in college, although it was during this time that hustle-culture and the “gig-economy” slithered into the zeitgeist, followed by its repulsive cousin: the turn-your-personal-hobbies-into-money Creature from the Etsy Lagoon.

By the time I had graduated with my B.S. in Journalism and face-planted into the “great” recession, I though my situation-ship with burnout was passé — I knew how to spot that bastard coming, and how to avoid it.

… Turns out that as I was building my career, the damn thing took a PhD in sneaking up on me.

Burnout is when monkey(brain) Meg takes over — this is also charitably referred to as the primal or lizard brain, but it lacks the alliterative flair I so love. Everything feels life-or-death, fight-or-flight. And sometimes, I just freeze (or impulsively want a tattoo). But it’s not a restful hibernation, nonono… it’s a guilt-ridden roller coaster of wanting to rest, but my brain self-sabotaging. I’ll be getting ready for bed and thinking about what Slack messages I’d forgotten, or what calendar shenanigans await me in the morning; even while supine I stay in motion, scrolling through my phone (which of course does nothing for the quality of my sleep).

In other words (those of a theatre-kid): my nervous system is trying to go on with the show, but that wily ol’ Phantom keeps dropping light-fixtures left and right.

OK, enough with the metaphors — here is how I am (attempting) to pull myself up out of my current slump:

• Friends (micro-dosing); I spend time with people who are great at giving me my own advice. I am a champion practitioner of “do as I say, not as I do,” and I need folks to say the same things to me about self-care that I say to them (they are harder to ignore than my inner voice)
• Nature (feasting); I intentionally live in a neighborhood where I have access to BIG spaces. Golden Gate Park. Ocean Beach. Anywhere I can go that reminds me I am a tiny person with tiny problems, on a tiny blue dot spinning around in a vast universe
• Music (mainlining); whether listening to or making, music is the key to my emotions, especially when I pay it the proper attention rather than use it as a distraction
• Movement (consistent); see my previous post
• Chores (they have a beginning and an end); I need my external spaces to be tidy in order for my internal ones to become so
• Preparation (the balancing act); worrying about the future is not the same thing as taking a limited amount of time to set myself up for success. For example, I have set my alarm 10min earlier so that I can get up and stretch and eat something before I take my pills (instead of the Loony-Tunes dash I’ve been doing on-and-off since November)

After all, Future Me(g) deserves love, not just problems — but if Present Me(g) doesn’t start doing better by herself, both are going to go * poof *

SF Neighborhoods/Places Explored: It poured rain this week; probably another reason it was all too easy to mire myself in mental-muck

Soundtrack: /no resonance

Bus + Bench Book: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lesson-Learned: I’m tired, boss