truth be told

looking inward

I'm burnt out.
It's not the first time, and won't be the last, but I'm tired.
That makes me anxious, and tired, and the burnout exacerbates.

looking outward

It's a flood.
News of creative cruelty and destruction by the needless.
All I want is to look away for a while.

I must. I can't.

My job requires me to track it all,
not with compassion and pain as I'd wish,
but with cynical analysis of how it affects the company.

In front of everything I do, a wall of white noise.
It shuts down my thoughts,
drains the strength from my body,
my heart becomes a paradox: is it imploding or exploding?

It's impossible to push through it,
the only thing to do is
wait
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
clearly it ends eventually.

"Hey, how are you?"
I smile, take eye contact out of the equation, sigh through a "yeah, I'm doing good".
Dry humour in response to whatever comes next.
Some excuse to justify cutting the conversation short.

This isn't a cry for help.
I've got support, therapy, tools I can use to overcome.
Still sucks though.
Still need a holiday.

This post isn't constructive.
Aren't you supposed to have some point,
like, how everything is going to get better eventually
and to just have hope?

I hope that's true.
It better be true.
The point of it all now, for me,
is constructing a piece of the world that's good, and meaningful, and sustainable, for the child I'm putting into it.