Re: Burnout

What even is resting?

I am (probably) burned out right now. Not for the first time, probably not for the last, and it's a condition I'm getting increasingly familiar with, and sick of. Exhaustion is exhausting. At least the name fits. It does feel like being burned hollow. Carbonized.

I spent several days this week pretty worried I was having a mild heart attack. (Spoiler: I was not, and am fine.) Chest pain, arm pain, lightheaded, short of breath, the works. Had an EKG come back "not fantastic," in the urgent care, which I gotta say, was a bit concerning. Adjusted to the anxious possibility of life-threatening illness surprisingly quickly. Got more tests done. They came back totally normal. Adjusted back to the reality of not having a life-threatening illness after all. (Other than depression.)

All this to say, I've been pushing myself too hard. Big surprise. I don't know if that's why I was having pseudo-cardiac symptoms, or whether it was just muscular discomfort from bad sleeping ergonomics, but I'm trying to use this as a wake-up call. I guess. At the the end of the day, l don't know that it's more than an anecdote. 

Weird to say, given how it felt at the time.

I find refuge in working on projects. For the last year-plus, that's increasingly meant tabletop role-playing games; reading, talking, writing, designing, and very occasionally getting to the table ... mostly solo and mostly Mothership, which is sci-fi horror. 

And I love horror, and I love working on game projects, but when my "getaway" is stressful and oppressive, and my "break" from a design and marketing job is to do ... more design work? Well. It's not exactly restful!

I don't have to do this! They're games! It's supposed to be fun! It's supposed to be play! And it is fun knocking out ship plans and mech designs in Affinity, even when it rolls around on hour twelve for the second day in a row. Arguably, it's a kind of play. But it's a lot of effort, too. And my impulse control? Nowhere to be seen. 

In the meantime, it sucks stepping back from projects I'm excited about because I know working on them will dig me deeper into The Depths of Despair, but not working on anything leaves me listless. (Or worse: bored.) I want stress, and I love challenge, and so I'm left without much I can do to relax. This might be a problem with the way I'm wired. This might be the simple result of too much fucking self-induced pressure.

I've (mostly) kicked my perfectionism, but there's still a strong desire to be "the best" at whatever it is I'm doing. To start out shit-hot. To do nothing less. This is not healthy OR sustainable, but I have yet to replace it with something that is.

And the world churns.

Projects accumulate greater scope. From logo practice, to a logo library, to letterhead and handouts, to 100+ pages of description writing. From one scenario to a collection of them. From the notes app to individually laid out and illustrated pages. From 20-ish monsters to 100+. There's a kind of arrogance to it, if I'm being harsh. 

Or, more kind: I'm passionate about games, and kind of isolated. My usual players are busy. I have terrific social anxiety about reaching out more directly. I start projects because I'm excited, and have trouble finishing them because I'm exhausted. The crossover between what I want to do and what I can do is slimmer than I think. Or it just takes longer, and I'm impatient.

The easy fix is to step back, wait, recover. 

But it hardly solves the double bind that the things I do for fun wear me down almost as much as the things I do for work. Even this! My response to burnout is to knock out some writing about it. Analyze the problem. Break it down. Work on it.

This is here on the off chance it's helpful for someone. It was helpful to write. I think it's important to be open about this stuff. (Cliché, I know.)

I meant to say something larger about games culture, or structures of work/play within art-making and tabletop. But I don't know that the problem I have is anything particular to games, nearly as much as it's particular to me and my particular flavors of mental illness. Nor is the solution anything special and games-relevant. Slow down. Rest.

I'm playing in a FIST game this afternoon and picked my electric guitar back up yesterday. I'll work it out.