I’m burnt out! Tired? Fatigued? Unmotivated? Yep, yep, yep.

Burnout happens slowly. You don’t even know it’s there until, well…you do. For me it’s happened as a result of trying too hard in too many different areas of my life. Trying, because I felt that if I didn’t, even for a second, things might fall apart, like that sense of control I imposed on things was actually real.

It’s because I’ve been exerting too much energy for too many different projects without much of a return. It’s because I’ve been busy holding things together so they resembled a form of normal, even during distinctly out of the ordinary times. It’s because, quite simply, I’m tired and I’ve run out of energy.

Sound familiar?

I was thinking about burn out during my walk tonight. As I motivated myself to get out the door, sneakers on, music at the ready, the thoughts were there, but not yet formed. But as I pushed myself to get through the walk, ducking in out of the last rays of sunshine, Fitbit clocking up steps — that’s when the term ‘burnout’ jumped out at me, and I realised with a start — yes, that’s about as accurate a term for it as I can get.

Walking has a way of crystallising my thoughts so that I can see them better. As I turned over the term ‘burnout’ in my mind, flipping it over to see all it’s spiky edges, it didn’t feel pretty. Burn out is a terrible term, because there is no hiding or backing away from it, or pretending it means something else. Burnout means burnt out, simple as that. And maybe because it’s not an easy thing to talk about or admit, I decided I’d come home and write about it.

You see, the thing with burnout is that it’s cumulative, it happens so quietly — too quietly, in fact. How can we know we’re experiencing it if the build up is so slow? I’d like to think our bodies could develop their own traffic light system — green for all good, keep going, orange for remembering to pause, and red to alarm us to slow down and just stop. But it’s not quite as straightforward usually.

But can it be?

I think perhaps. But we may need to install those traffic lights first. We may need to learn our body’s signals properly.

In the meantime, I’m getting comfy and calling it an early night!