Burn Out is Real.
Let's just be honest here for a moment.
Burn out is real. And it's awful to work through.
For the last 6 months I've been dealing with this nagging feeling, as if I'm not making progress forwards or backwards. I'm just stuck where I am. And even when I feel like I am making progress I feel as though it's going nowhere fast. But a lot of my feelings of burn out are coming from what I'm doing now with myself.
I leave my house, go to work, and I'm there for 9 hours. I don't feel like I make any progress on any one thing while I'm there. My mind is constantly moving and trying to stay focused but in the end I feel like I leave having not accomplished a single thing. I feel like I wasted all this time and accomplished nothing. The sad thing is that once I leave there I'm so mentally exhausted that when I do finally get home, all I want to do is sit. I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to go anywhere else, I don't even want to pick up my phone to send a text.
All I want to do is sit there.
There are days when I get home from work where I don't even take off my work clothes, or even my shoes. I walk into my room, sit down at my desk chair, and just.... sit there. Total silence. No TV, no music, no computer on, I just sit there and let my mind wander. I look around my room at all the things I need to clean up or work on, but my mind is so mentally gone from the present moment that I don't even want to get up to work on those things. Eventually I'll open up my laptop or pick up my phone, but all I'll do is mindlessly scroll through Facebook or Instagram, not really working on anything pertinent.
It definitely is not a good thing at all.
I wonder sometimes if it's a mixture of burn out and depression. I do battle with that on a regular basis and I always ask myself if I'm letting that take control again. There are things I want to do at work, programs I want to work on, and things I want to do in order to further and expand my personal development (both inside and outside the work place), but I feel like I'm being held down. I ask myself if I'm just giving up hope and just settling in to what I have.
I went on a walk this morning with my stepmother, and I find that during those walks it really helps to clear things out of my mind. I talk out a lot of my frustrations and how I generally feel, just in a way to make space in my mind for the healthy thoughts. I've found lately that this helps on those days when I'm going to work.... I don't feel the anxiety "building in my chest" as I'm making the commute, or at least, it's not as bad.
After our walk, I sat down to relax (I'm sore like crazy, walking 5 miles in 1.5 hours is no joke) and I was thinking about some short-term and long-term goals. I've got two trips coming up to Georgia in April and June, followed by a planned trip to Detroit, MI for a family reunion in late June. Thinking about those trips, I started to set some short-term and long-term goals, both for work and myself. A lot of them will facilitate lots of changes in my life, and a lot of moving around and new environments. At the end of the day though, it's all in an effort to help myself in the best way possible. I'm letting myself lose sight of what's important, which is me.
The only person who cares the most about me is indeed me.
Burn out is real, though. For sure. You work hard, a lot, all the time, without any breaks, and see if you can make it to the end. It's tough though, especially without any goals for yourself or anything in sight to look forward to. Setting some goals though.... that will help for sure.
Right now, I'm just aiming to make it to April 15th. If I can make it there, I can make it to June 8th. After that, the ball is definitely going to roll.... and the odds will definitely be in my favor.
Time to get a little bit... sideways.
Burn out is real. And it's awful to work through.
For the last 6 months I've been dealing with this nagging feeling, as if I'm not making progress forwards or backwards. I'm just stuck where I am. And even when I feel like I am making progress I feel as though it's going nowhere fast. But a lot of my feelings of burn out are coming from what I'm doing now with myself.
I leave my house, go to work, and I'm there for 9 hours. I don't feel like I make any progress on any one thing while I'm there. My mind is constantly moving and trying to stay focused but in the end I feel like I leave having not accomplished a single thing. I feel like I wasted all this time and accomplished nothing. The sad thing is that once I leave there I'm so mentally exhausted that when I do finally get home, all I want to do is sit. I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to go anywhere else, I don't even want to pick up my phone to send a text.
All I want to do is sit there.
There are days when I get home from work where I don't even take off my work clothes, or even my shoes. I walk into my room, sit down at my desk chair, and just.... sit there. Total silence. No TV, no music, no computer on, I just sit there and let my mind wander. I look around my room at all the things I need to clean up or work on, but my mind is so mentally gone from the present moment that I don't even want to get up to work on those things. Eventually I'll open up my laptop or pick up my phone, but all I'll do is mindlessly scroll through Facebook or Instagram, not really working on anything pertinent.
It definitely is not a good thing at all.
I wonder sometimes if it's a mixture of burn out and depression. I do battle with that on a regular basis and I always ask myself if I'm letting that take control again. There are things I want to do at work, programs I want to work on, and things I want to do in order to further and expand my personal development (both inside and outside the work place), but I feel like I'm being held down. I ask myself if I'm just giving up hope and just settling in to what I have.
I went on a walk this morning with my stepmother, and I find that during those walks it really helps to clear things out of my mind. I talk out a lot of my frustrations and how I generally feel, just in a way to make space in my mind for the healthy thoughts. I've found lately that this helps on those days when I'm going to work.... I don't feel the anxiety "building in my chest" as I'm making the commute, or at least, it's not as bad.
After our walk, I sat down to relax (I'm sore like crazy, walking 5 miles in 1.5 hours is no joke) and I was thinking about some short-term and long-term goals. I've got two trips coming up to Georgia in April and June, followed by a planned trip to Detroit, MI for a family reunion in late June. Thinking about those trips, I started to set some short-term and long-term goals, both for work and myself. A lot of them will facilitate lots of changes in my life, and a lot of moving around and new environments. At the end of the day though, it's all in an effort to help myself in the best way possible. I'm letting myself lose sight of what's important, which is me.
The only person who cares the most about me is indeed me.
Burn out is real, though. For sure. You work hard, a lot, all the time, without any breaks, and see if you can make it to the end. It's tough though, especially without any goals for yourself or anything in sight to look forward to. Setting some goals though.... that will help for sure.
Right now, I'm just aiming to make it to April 15th. If I can make it there, I can make it to June 8th. After that, the ball is definitely going to roll.... and the odds will definitely be in my favor.
Time to get a little bit... sideways.
Comments
Post a Comment