Burning Out in Real Time

Live Wire

I’m late. by the end of this note you’ll know better why. Of course, I had planned to write about something I thought was important this week. The idea that we become what we are filled with. It’s something that compliments the works of James K.A. Smith, and my own experience as an apprentice in Tap Dance Land. Well, that will have to wait…at least a week. Instead, I’m going to break some of the rules I normally hold to here, and share differently.

The Rules

Number one. Never retell a story that is less than three years old. Told to me by Peter Aguero, an award winning storyteller and host of The Moth, this rule bears weight. Retelling stories requires remembering. Remembering brings back to life all the meaning associated with the memories. Meaning doesn’t normally settle until enough context is visible. Context tends to clarify only with time and space. If we don’t wait in our retellings, we run the risk of misunderstanding our own journey. We end up bringing back to life, memories that haven’t found their rightful place. We relive a lie every time we retell the story. This is worth considering.

Number two. Never tell private stories. What is private is meant to stay private. The privacy allows for enough protection – no “outside meddling” – for the above meaning-settling to occur. The privacy also prevents outside interference in the continuing life. We all know the kind of people who don’t respect the access they have to the inner workings of ones life, and cause hurt by it. There is one place where the breaking of privacy is allowed within this rule. If something useful can be found in the private story – some moral or teachable lesson, for example – then the privacy may be breached.

Number three. If you’re going to live-and-tell you have to be honest, respectful of the living and dead, and willing to sacrifice your own life, for the possibility that the current retelling may render someone else inspired.

So, just so that we’re on the same page, I’m breaking rules one and two for the hopes of rule number three.

The Backstory

Coming out of my burnout in 2019, I had many helpful conversations. Each one helped me attempt to reconstitute my life. One in particular was with a friend, David. We had had conversations before. He knew me, and I trusted him. As I shared my experience, what had happened, and the pain I was walking through, he was compassionate and helpful. Towards the end of conversation, he said something I didn’t expect. “You will likely feel this way again.” It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It definitely wasn’t encouraging. I remember chuckling through my tears at the time. Why? I could tell it was honest – even prophetic.

Burnout, as I’ve experienced it, is a function of habits of thought and action. The way I interact with myself, other people, places, things, and ideas, given the right mixture, has a way of sending me down a pretty rough path. However, like sounds that a car begins to have right before it needs a looking at, the signals that burnout is about to happen may be sensed ahead of time. Having burned out before, I could tell when my engine was about to seize. All the ingredients were in place.

The Mixture

The parts that interact with each other to lead me to burnout are not evil in and of themselves. It is in their formation, and their interaction that evil has found a way in. The journey is about identifying that evil, and doing what I can – trusting that God will do only what he can – to position myself for a change. Part of the identification process is having my eyes open to the pattern. How does evil sneak into my life?

One part, limitations of time. For the past seven months I’ve been working part time at a kitchen cabinetry shop. Yes, woodworking. Nail-guns, table saws, loud noises, glue, clamps, and all kind of hand tools have become a regular part of my life. There are many good reasons I looked for and took the gig, and so many amazing learnings from my time there, but those will have to wait for another time. The thing most pertinent to our topic here is this: the shop took 16 hours out of my week. The added work time, limited the amount of time I could dedicate to other creative work. There was less time for thinking, feeling, doing, processing, experimenting, and editing, for example. My week shrunk.

Two parts endings. I’ve experienced some significant relational endings in the past few months. I have a way of grieving endings that is compounding. I’m saddened by the ending itself. There is the death of whatever futures were attached to the relationships. There is the guilt around my role in the endings. Then there is the grief of the fact that endings, and the separations that come with them, even exist. I grieve the pain they cause and my part in it all. The grief came with interrupted sleep, spontaneous crying, anger, and some mental fog.

One part feelings of isolation. I sometimes experience the very distinct feeling of not belonging. Not on account of any particular attribute, or personality quirk, but on account of the world that I live in. That world being a combination of an attempt of a way, an idea of a truth, and the hope of a life. Dealt with imperfectly, I still feel “outside” more often than not. Moreover, I’ve been contemplating the fact that the path I’m on requires others for it to come into fulfillment and that I can’t seem to find the people to journey with.

Two parts added opportunity. In both January and February I had the pleasure of having special events – a tour in Vancouver, and the Dam Short Film Festival. Each constituted five full days of travel and events wedged precisely in between my regular work week responsibilities. Each event was filled with new people, new things, new feelings of comfort, and new challenges. They both also took away the time in my week that I normally use to breathe in – rest, doing nothing, read, stretch, chat with friends. The opportunities came with a significant cost.

One part lack of rest. The lack of rest, or breathing in, did all the things that lack of rest does. It slowed down my thinking, depleted the strength of my body (read: immune system), and interacted spectacularly with the interrupted sleep I was already experiencing. I started spinning or thrashing – that feeling that you are always behind, will never catch up, and that there is no way out. When this began to happen I began to feel lifted. As if my feet weren’t as solidly on the ground as they normally are. I started to float through the day, and the days began to string themselves together – then the weeks. Then it is March and I can’t even remember what happened on my trip to Vancouver.

Cough, Cough, Cough

It began Friday evening. While judging a wonderful performance of Chicago: Teen Edition, at a local high school, for the Idaho High School Theater Awards. Cough, cough, cough. By Saturday morning, I had the chills and a very mild very fever. My body was running hot, trying to fight this, cough, cough, cough. Sunday, the tears came. Now crying and cough, cough, cough. I hit the bottom.

Have you ever had the feeling that something inside needed to come out? I’d been looking for the opportunity. I was doing what I could to process, manage, even let go of what was inside. But the mixture I mentioned earlier didn’t allow for much time or attention dedicated to this, so it was in fits and starts. I was squeezing in time, trying to get the work in. What I really needed was a safe place to have good cry.

I know I hit bottom, because there was no place else to go. I cleared my schedule for the week. I didn’t leave my house. For two days I let the emotions flow over me. I didn’t stop them. With every emotional surge, a different set of thoughts came to the surface.

• You’re not strong enough

• You hurt too easily

• You can’t survive in this world

• You’re too much

• You ask too much of yourself and others

• You’re too sensitive

• You don’t know how to manage your life

• You don’t deserve anything

• You will always be alone

• You are stubborn, hard-hearted, and inconsiderate

I could go on…they just kept coming.

To help balance the surge, I started binge watching N.C.I.S., the pop culture crime drama series about a team of Navy cops. The heart of the show is the relationships between the team members, and I used the show as a sounding board for resonance. As I would witness particular interactions in the team – perhaps fighting for each other or with each other, protecting each other, suffering loss together, seeing each other in new ways, or coming to the aide of a particular member – emotions would surface, tears would flow, and I would take note.

The emotional resonance is connected to points of sensitivity in me. The big thing is the identification of dreams of the ways I wish I could experience relationships. This is coupled by the sense of loss or distance from said dreams.

Hmmm. That’s interesting. The last time I burnt out the first thing that left me was my ability to dream. This time, it seems as if my dream is the thing that I am fighting for. What is that dream? It’s the fullness of the Kingdom of God – where what God wants to have happen happens. Where God’s love and goodness, and kindness, and mercy, and gentleness, and patience, and did I mention love? – are all present in every moment of life. I want to be immersed in that from the moment I wake up to the moment go back to visit God at the end of my day. There are a lot of thoughts and questions that I’m still working out on this…but there are a few things that are guiding my way.

God is love. Love wills the good of the object of love. When I give attention to God with me, I am overwhelmed by his love. I trust God in this experience and continue to set my sights on what he is doing in me through this.

Burnout is not good. It is not something that is “supposed to happen,” especially on a cyclical or regular basis. There is a way out of it. I was guided through it before, so I can experience that again, too. And this entire experience, too, will be used for good.

I’m an odd duck. When enough people tell you that – even folks whose entire life is the study of people – there may be some truth to it. Being an odd duck normally leads me to feelings of isolation. Not this time. Now, there are some really good people in my life, who know me, and who I trust to walk with me in this.

Right now, these few things are enough for me to get up and get to work.

For those of you who read these notes, and know me, know that I am okay. This is a thing that I have gone through before, and I know there is a way out. I’m working on making the necessary choices to get out and stay out of the danger of burnout even longer than the last time. That said, I will gladly take thoughts and prayers as those are the medium of the spiritual and this, my friends is a spiritual journey.