are you a burnout? have you ever been a burnout?

asking for a friend

I was a hippie
I was a burnout
I was a dropout I was out of my head

Yes. Explaining all the details surrounding that time in my life is a bit more than I want to tackle right now, but I was able to align enough resources to do what I desperately needed, which was quit my job, which btw was not the primary source of my burnout, and stay voluntarily unemployed for several years. It restored my health, my marriage and my sanity.

I feel like burnout implies there was something to burn so in my case no

Am not currently, but have been. (Specifically the "Ex-gifted kid gets really into drugs" kind of burnout.)

yes

Not in the "pot-smoking teenage layabout" sense of the term, but in the sense of "person who burned out at work," yes, definitely.

A combination of moving to a new city where I didn't know anyone but my family, to start my first year of public school teaching (notorious for requiring 80+ hours of work a week), in a highly demanding district and in a content area I wasn't really trained for, plus my closest friend having a psychotic break and being hospitalized for depression/psychosis, and my cousin who I'm very close to getting stuck in an abusive relationship with a severely mentally ill heroin addict who routinely threatened to burn down her house, put me in a state where I had very little in the way of a support system and was using all my energy to try to support my friends. I was running on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, due to all the class planning I had to do, and all my time when I wasn't thinking about my friends was spent thinking about school. So when I made mistakes at work due to sleep deprivation or being new at my job, it was THE END OF THE WORLD and I was consumed with anxiety and self-loathing and all I could think of was "I have to work EVEN HARDER," which of course made it worse and made me more isolated.

By the end of the school year, my state of mind was virtually indistinguishable from serious clinical depression. I had trouble being in public places because I would start crying out of nowhere, felt like some kind of strange alien being unfit to associate with actual humans, compulsively listened to the last track of Nebraska on repeat - that sort of thing. It was all purely situational; once my job ended and I got some sleep and exercise and just some distance from the whole thing, I felt much better.

It's been about a year and a half since that job ended. I'm teaching again, but now I have a good support system, lovely housemates, and a schedule that gives me a lot more planning time, and it makes all the difference.

Far out, you have my immense respect Lily.
Smaller scale here, but my job retains pretty much none of the intense, vocational motivation which kept me going, and is now a pile of administrative bullshit. I’ve ceased caring about the quality, but even worse I’ve ceased caring about the passion which led me here in the first place. Add that to a failed marriage, unsatisfying place to live and chronic back pain, I feel like a burnout yes.

Dunno if I'm a burnout, but sometimes I feel like I have always been a smoldering pile of coals

Yes, as a "person who burned out at work', in 2018. It wasn't so much the work as much as a severe change for the worse in office politics/ outright favouritism and being sidelined.

It actually led me back more closely here and to ILM in a way - as I became somewhat anhedonic, and there was a real charm in this place where people have enthusiasms and interests. It started me back to thinking what do I actually enjoy doing, what do i want to do more of ?

Like Lily it was situational, and largely disappeared when I changed job. But I still detect some background traces of anxiety, and it's completely ruined my previous enjoyment of marijuana - which brings anxiety back to the foreground.

thanks for sharing everyone, good stuff. love to you all.

Very likely from about 22 through 30ish tbh

I've certainly felt 9n the brink of burnout various times in my life including now. My attitude now is to put my head down and muscle through it until I get to the point where I have greater latitude to make real changes.

Burnout in my late 20s and it took most of a decade to recover.

TS: being a burnout vs. being a fadeaway

24-27 were pretty much my burnout years - working a long line of dead-end jobs in sad conditions, sensing either things I wanted to do I couldn't make a living out of and anything else I didn't have the credentials / talent for. so I moved out to the boonies with my folks for about a year, including a treeplanting excursion, then moved out to get my post-grad certificate and have been steadily employed and - usually - more or less on a steadily upward trend of improvement since.

Depends on the definition— I have been a gifted kid who fell into drugs, a promising young journalist who quit to pursue a relationship that didn't pan out, a paralegal student who left to make a living in a weird retail job which I later quit to work on weed farms while living in the woods.

To be honest, I consider myself more as someone who has "dropped out," but often for good reason— the world is a disappointing and often crushing place, and sometimes leaving the confines of polite society does the body and mind a lot of good.

Quitting the journalism thing was probably the worst decision I made in my life, but oh well.

Well, that and not getting a PhD after I finished undergrad. I could probably have tenure now if someone had pointed me in the right direction.

I have pretty constant regrets about not even trying to pursue a career in journalism. I graduated into the recession without a job lined up and decided that I wasn't enough of a go-getter to be competitive in a dying profession. Probably an accurate assessment of my own abilities, but I spent most of my high school and college years thinking I would write for a living, and I still have that sense of shame about not living up to my (supposed) potential.

I do not, however, regret not getting a Ph.D. I decided it would kill my soul to write that much academic bullshit for no one to read, and I stand by that decision.

i'm fading away

I was becoming a burnout from 19-21. then I just dropped out of college and enlisted.

xps a PhD is for *yourself* to read. And tenure is not always a great place to be.

TS being "a burnout" vs being "burned out"

tenure is not always a great place to be

A talent is not always a calling.

That's the thing: I'm actually an excellent teacher, and I love doing it.

well said Aimless, I have failed to learn from this twice now

Whats a burnout? How do I know if I’ve been one? Or am one?

I have definitely experienced work related burnout but would never say that experience characterizes me to the degree that I’d accept te title of burnout.

i don't think there's any definition of burnout that applies to you!

xp to MatthewK and Aimless: very true. I do like teaching and think what I do has a lot of value. And I don't think my sense of regret about not writing for a living is particularly rational. But I identify with what table says upthread because it's a feeling I've had a hard time shaking.

I hope I didn't come across as critical of Ph.Ds in general, or of the choice to pursue one. I don't think all Ph.D. programs are bullshit; I just feel pretty sure mine would have been.

Not the Slater/Spicoli type of burnout (though not for lack of trying in high school). Work-related, yes--when I retired from teaching full time, I'd hit the wall and didn't want to do another report card or parent interview or staff meeting for the rest of my life.

how do you define it. I was on the dole for about 18 months at the age of 25 and I felt my life was going nowhere and didn't know what I was doing. but it was precipitated by a crash in the economy not anything I'd done, and I met the woman who'd be my partner and wife for the next 18 years. so yeah i spent a year getting up at 1pm and smoking dope and i felt pretty lost at the time. but it worked out ok until actually serious problems happened

I think if you've experienced burnout you really know it

I'm a burnout or rather I've spent most of my life being one, and where I am now is the result of that. Started drinking at 12 and spent most of the next quarter century being a mediocre student, then a mediocre employee in a variety of mediocre clerical and customer service jobs, drinking and doing drugs in the evenings and weekends. Only a couple periods of unemployment in there, so a burnout with the protestant work ethic drilled into me perhaps.

Only really experienced burnout once. Worked at a call centre for 6 months in my early 20s, had nightmares about the beep that heralded my next call, thought about suicide a good amount, got fucked up straight after work each friday straight through til the early hours of monday morning and had a 2 or 3 day comedown/hangover every week

I think so. I burnt myself out in grad school, barely finished, and was pretty unproductive for a few years after that. I was lucky to have a lot of family support (financially, among other things), but ultimately it took time to feel confident again.

Incidentally, I don't think there was was any open discussion in that grad program about mental health and the particular kinds of mental pressure that grad students face. I hope that things are different now.

Lily Dale, as a young person I vaguely thought I would become a writer. It was something my family taught me to value highly. I read a lot, had a good grasp of language, and a vocabulary in the 99th percentile. But in reality I was clueless about how to enter a career as a writer.

I didn't get serious until I'd dropped out of college, flailed around a while, and made a fresh start at college after another couple years. Even at The Evergreen State College I never found anyone qualified to teach me what I needed to learn, so I just read analytically and wrote non-stop for a couple of years. I got much better. Not in the MFA sense, but that wasn't my goal.

I still knew nothing about how to write a publishable book. I wrote one third of an historical novel. It was a decent start, possibly commercial, but I ran out of time. I finally shelved that ambition, tried my hand at advertising copywriting, hated it, then became a very proficient technical writer. Finally, I wrote a book that satisfied me. It isn't a book that would ever make a dime for me or any publisher, because it doesn't fit any pre-existing audience or market. But I am a writer and I have written one good book. That turns out to be enough.

Wow, Aimless, how cool! I didn't mean to derail the thread with Woe Is Me I Should Be A Writer, which is just something my brain yells at me from time to time, rather than something I really believe. But I suppose it is relevant to burnout - in the sense that when I burned out teaching, I also had a little voice in my brain saying "This is what you get for going into teaching; what made you think you could be good at this when you should be doing something else?"

I've been perfecting severe procrastination as a form of high-functioning burnout for 40 or so years, man.

it could be argued that I am but I think I just screwed everything up instead

^ same

i was so wasted, yes

That track is so killer

tomorrow is going to be long and i'm already feeling burned out by it, lol, but i've got weights in the morning and love at home, maybe that's all that matters.

my last job totally burned me out hard, it was really bad. I am a def a burnout/slacker in general but I consider that a different thing.

I think I was collosally frazzled by the end of the 90s. It's possible to push on as a teen but after 15 years of work (when I had jobs) and the main curriculum of caning it, in both areas with very little if any understanding of limits to do with neurotype, the breaks were going to go on hard one way or another. At the last minute I managed to duck out from under several piles of shit into an art college course with the expectation that it would at least allow me to get by for a few years, which it did. Two decades later I wouldn't say I've recovered completely but I'm healthier than ever in some ways and knowing one's limits is incredibly valuable it turns out.

know limits

Me and my partner are both hitting the wall I think

TS being "a burnout" vs being "burned out"

― I want to change my display name (dan m), Sunday, November 29, 2020 12:42 AM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd not heard of being "a burn out" until this thread but have been pondering feeling "burned out" for a bit. What helps with the latter?

If I consider Graham Greene's dictum that burnout is the long despair of doing nothing well then aye, I can see that in the last 15 months.

That Graham Greene line certainly sums up the kind of burnout I experienced. Intellectually I knew I'd been set up to fail and there was no way I could reach the standards I expected of myself, but that doesn't make it any less soul-killing to keep failing.

I don't really know what helps, though, other than leaving your job if that is what you are burned out by. That was what I did, but I didn't have a choice; I got bumped from my job and it was crushing but also the best thing that could have happened to me. (I also developed a sudden, consuming obsession with Bruce Springsteen, which helped pretty much instantly, but I don't know that this would help/be possible for anyone else.)

I was in a bad state a few years ago (financial dire straits, suicide attempt by partner, section 47, my son with autism going through a very angry violent stage of adolescent development). What I learnt was I can actually be a surprisingly scary mofo when I'm on the edge. Now a few local thugs who I made to look like the soft wankers they are want to come back for me. Just when I'm back to my normal chilled self - I now have to rediscover my burnt out, on the edge persona - just to survive in this goddam jungle!

everybody I know is a burnout

i have been a burnout since i was about 13 probably. intrigued that there are people who say they were once burnouts but are no longer, or are less burnt out than they once were. what's the secret - therapy? no drugs? different drugs? yoga? change in occupation and/or location? luck?

I feel like I haven't burnt out hard enough. Yet. Which is tantamount to being a burnout.

change in occupation and/or location? luck?

― Left

Yep, yep, yep

planning to move & get a job, the rest is in god's hands

all my worst nightmares are about working, literally! I had one last night.

i don't want to work but not working hasn't done me much good either so idk

I get burned out about the third week of every month. But then the first two weeks of the new month all the money arrives and I feel better.

conditions are slowly improving for me being less of a burnout, at about the rate my aging seems to be eroding my energy stores.

kinda like my annual raise being cancelled out by annual rent / cost of living increases. which, come to think of it, is a big contributor to my burnout.

Let me tell ya, I am fucking *thrilled* to be done (in a few weeks) with this freelance gig I've been working on and off since February. I think I'm just going to take January off and take long winter hikes with the dogs, work on writing, and fuck around. I need it.