BURNOUT

May 3rd, 2026

I was telling the guy I am seeing yesterday that I am in the process of auditing. 

Life feels much more chaotic than usual, or maybe it's no longer possible to hide all of my chaos behind the closet doors, eventually, the stop being able to shut properly. I think I've exhausted all of the space afforded to me, my clutter is creeping outwards, and maybe that's why I'm finding it difficult to breathe. 

A few weeks back, my therapist used an analogy on me. She asked me to consider that my nervous system was a computer. That on said computer, were several programs running all at once. That instead of closing down some of the programs in a timely and ordered fashion, I just kept them all open. That I would, in addition to that, keep pushing through lags, system shutdowns, and so on. She said that in such an instance, no one would blame the computer for failing - that to fix the issue, the programs would have to be shut down anyway and that I would, instead, need to give it room to reboot before trying to resume with work. 

We (me and the guy I am seeing) had dinner, and then afterwards, we went to see a live performance (a comedy) called Burnout Paradise at the Astor Place Theatre. I wasn't sold at first, but I thought it was brilliant while watching. Essentially, four artists are running on seperate treadmills. Each treadmill represented a category of our lives: leisure, administrative, lifestyle, and so on. For four separate rounds, the artists switched categories and took turns trying to run on a treadmill, while also balancing their respective tasks. I guess it dawned on me that life felt very much like that. I remember saying to my date that: "Life really feels like that sometimes, except we're all just one person." 

I'm running on the treadmill that is life, no end in sight, but I understand that time doesn't stretch on forever, and somehow, in the future, the treadmill will stop. But in the meantime, working out, cooking my meals, working, improving my circumstances through whatever means required..these are all things that must happen as I continue running on that treadmill. 

More than anything, I like to bury my head in the work. I devote all of my cognitive bandwidth to analyzing my way around the world. Through socializing, through making sense of the past, through strategizing a path forward, through refining my routines, and so on. It's rare that I look at it with resentment these days, but I guess it's dawning on me that I am creating the perfect conditions for burnout to occur. 

I can hardly be comfortable I need to shut down some of these tabs, give my nervous system time to reboot, and proceed from there. 

- vetiveroil