Last week I was featured on the Hopelessly Gifted podcast, chatting about giftedness and parenting and burnout. I’ve marinating in burnout for so long that I’m mentally and emotionally wrinkly. I originally wrote this post over on Substack last October before I was laid off; I think I may have written part of it over the summer. I dunno, time has no meaning and the rules are made up. Things are definitely better now, but hooooooboy it was touch and go there for awhile.
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When your therapist says, “Hey, your hobbies are all higher-level thinking and you need to rest that part of your brain for a bit,” your first inclination is to laugh and say no. But when you’ve been dealing with burnout and stress in every area of your life, and you’re desperate to feel like yourself again (whatever that may be), and perimenopause is winding up for a death blow, and the world just keeps getting darker and darker, and you’ve tried so much and nothing is working, then you don’t laugh and instead quietly retreat from the writing that you love and hope that you can return sooner rather than later.
She made that suggestion when I mentioned that I used to be able to write full essays in my head, type them out in rapid-fire word-vomit, edit, and hit post. I can no longer do that. I’m lucky if I have a string of words that make it from idle rumination to keyboard without losing 8/9ths of them. I am not kidding. Most of If This is a Gift, Can I Send It Back? was written in my head and chucked onto the page at coffeeshops in the precious few minutes I had when the kids were otherwise occupied. Same with 90% of the blog posts at Laughing at Chaos. Now? I’m not being facetious when I say that I forget words and phrases as I’m reaching for my pen to write them down. It’s a problem. The only thing saving me in the day-to-day is the processes and systems I’ve developed over the last 40-odd years. Write it in the planner, keep the planner close at hand at all times, and check in with the planner constantly. When you don’t know what to do, the planner does. All hail the planner!
But writing? Yeah, I’m struggling. I’m using up 80% of my executive function and higher-level thinking in my day job, another 5% is dedicated to day-to-day function (my god in heaven above I’m sick to death of meal planning AND MY HUSBAND DOES MOST OF IT), a solid 10% is background worry about the state of the world/family/finances/health (like a computer program that hangs and sucks up all available RAM), and the remaining 5% is a buffer to fill in as needed. I’ve made the analogy before (at least in my head) of a sock that has a hole where it’s been rubbed between a foot and shoe. My whole brain feels like that most days now. Holey. Sure as hell not holy.
There’s so much I want to write about. The mental hell of perimenopause, (mostly) launching young G2e adults, what it’s like being the gooey center of the sandwich generation, how GenX and Millennial gifted kids were screwed over, the world at large, playing around with some fiction writing…shit that I want to say. And my exhausted brain gets to the end of the day and says, “Oh honey, no. Fuck that shit. Have dinner and go play Nanogram or something. I’m tired, my bunions ache, and I’ve taken off my bra so I’m not doing a goddamned thing now.” I mean, I get it. I’m tired, my feet ache, and once that bra is off there is no going back; I just expected more of the grey matter directing this meatsuit. Who the hell is in charge here, anyway?
So I’ve been taking an unwelcome but probably very much needed break from the break I also didn’t intend to take when I stopped posting at Laughing at Chaos. Burnout is real, and for those on the gifted/twice-exceptional mechanical bull ride, it’s even more intense. Given that G2e people are MORE in every sense of the word, it figures that burnout would be MORE MORE. My back of the envelope calculations indicate that I’ve been stuck in a pretty significant depressive burnout for about five years. Life since March 2020 has been…intense. Not quite as personal as the shitstorm of 2011-2012, but close. It’s harder now in that everyone is struggling, so support is like a stretched out bra; it’s there but it’s fighting for its life against gravity and it’s all just one big sneeze from snapping free, taking an eye out in the process.
My analogies and metaphors, however, are still fire. I’ll take my wins wherever I can.
I don’t know when I’ll feel better. I don’t know, as we scream down this greased slide into more and more horrifying fascism, if I will feel better. But I know this; I’ve said it so many times and it needs repeating now:
If you decide to confide in others, you’ll discover you’re not alone
Burnout may have me in a death grip but I’m still kicking.
I’ve missed your wit and I completely get it… all of it. If you haven’t already (and why haven’t you?!) check out the We Do Not Care club, accidentally created by Melani on FB (the Black Hole of gray matter). You’re not alone. Laughter will pull us through!