On Letting Go
It’s October 2020. I am taking a bio-break from work to use the bathroom and grab a glass of water. I notice dishes in the sink. Well, I have three minutes. I can put these in the dishwasher. While I’m doing that, I can wipe down the counter.
Didn’t you want to drink some water? Oh yeah, and I have to get back to work.
I rush back to my desk, and try to focus on what’s in front of me. Unfortunately, all I can access is fog. It’s been months of this, rushing between profitable labor, and reproductive labor. I am losing track of where the time is going, yet painfully aware of how long it’s been. Catching my own eye in the bathroom mirror, on the verge of tears, I realize I cannot ignore it anymore.
I started the year with a resolution to learn how to rest, and somehow while I’ve been home all year, the burnout is all-encompassing. My work was gracious enough to allow me to take the time I needed to recover, and I’ve been off since November 23rd.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed in my month of recovery and self-preservation.
In the beginning, I had a hard time figuring out how to not do anything. Between not wanting to move a muscle, and being exhausted from being inside my head, I returned to a familiar coping mechanism: binge-watching television, binge-listening to podcasts, and reveling in the thrill of new information in longer form than 140 characters, or chopped up Instagram stories.
I noticed that I’ve trained my brain to do multiple things at once: starting with pressing that NOS button to go into overdrive when I needed to get through long nights in college — to creating new habits of expecting more from myself during my corporate stints. A reliance on coffee, EDM, and dangling rest in front of me as a reward, I would get through sprint after sprint. Still, it wasn’t so bad. Following the 2016 election, I entered the first phase of being constantly aware. Personally, this fueled my desire to pursue a graduate degree toward climate adaptation planning. But all what came from design school was more workaholism, where I was embedded into a pedagogy of overworking myself to spur innovation in a sleep-deprived state of creation. That wasn’t creativity, that was desperation.
The real world is not rife with such opportunities to constantly innovate in order to prove your individual excellence. I’ll admit the high of exhibiting my individual excellence is incomparable to anything else. However, I’ve been somewhat successful in my year of purging toxic work styles, and redefining my relationship with time, productivity, food, and care.
Which is why when someone asked me the other day what I hope to accomplish with all this time off, I was a bit offended. Not because it isn’t a reasonable question, but because we think it is a reasonable question. We’ve so steeped in the idea of productivity and production that any amount of time is seen as a tool to do something. In the beginning, I was calling this a “sabbatical” — trying to figure out how to deem this stretch of my existence worthy. Maybe I’ll write that novel, I’ve always wanted to learn how to play piano, and there’s the stack of half-read books I keep meaning to get to.
“Goals” are a helpful frame if I had any energy to churn anything out. The brain fog is thick, and the inspiration sparse. After 11 months of staying at home, and trying to exercise the same level of caution I have been since March — I am running out of ways to deal.
All the coping mechanisms that were previously working have become part of my day to day and thus inevitably turned into chores. There are the ones I do to keep myself sane, in addition to the chores that I do to keep myself living.
Everything feels like a chore. Every day is the same, all of these tasks take energy, and even the things that infuse energy back into my life take planning, thinking, and doing.
I’ve been trying my best to stay afloat, but there’s only so much I can do. Distractions only go so far. I keep censoring myself because it feels like I’m “complaining” but what’s really happening is — I feel bad because I am going through an event. It takes energy to figure out what’s wrong, energy to process what I might need, additional energy to do something about it: only to realize that the things I may need are not in reach.
Constantly downsizing my needs to fit the moment is exhausting.
The other day I was really looking forward to a slice of chocolate cake: and there was “no” reason for me to not have one. I’ve been home, not working, have all the ingredients. Please make it happen. But it turned out really dry. And I cried about it.
Why is my eye twitching? And why am I crying over a piece of cake?
I don’t remember needing an order to my mornings before, or simple household tasks taking so long before. Do I brush my teeth first or wash my face first? How am I forgetting this? This doesn’t need to be optimized. Oh yeah, I forgot to make the bed. My cat dropped litter everywhere, and needs to be swept up. It’s taking me forever to get from one place to the next.
There are moments throughout the day where I lose track of my thoughts, and forget what I’m supposed to be doing. Then there are the moments where my brain isn’t working. I find myself zoning out at the sink, was I washing dishes first or — wait, I burned my toast. I’m crying because I feel bored, and don’t know why I feel so empty and confused. I don’t know what to do with myself.
There are days where I am so tired, so exhausted, so sad. So unable to process my emotions and get to the next step of what I need to take care of myself. I remember crying over the sink, in the middle of making my coffee, crying in the shower — like what is happening to my body and my brain? What if I never feel better? When did thinking become so exhausting?
It feels like everyone has reached some kind of breaking point. None of our coping mechanisms are working anymore, yet we’re still going. We aren’t meant to function like this. Everyone needs more, and nobody can provide it. Virtual connection can only do so much. I call my friends but I have nothing to say.
I think that’s just how burnout works. I don’t choose to be cynical, skeptical, bored, listless, apathetic. It’s literally how my brain is responding these days.
Being burned out has a kind of helplessness and hopelessness that I didn’t anticipate nor know how to take care of. It follows me around, lingering. Some days it’s there and other times, I feel fine. Living in a constant state of anxiety, or in wait — I don’t know how to benchmark time anymore. Seasons are changing and yet the melancholy stays the same.
To all the people awakening to the cruel reality of this country’s bones of racism, capitalism, and white supremacy: what did you think was happening before? It is exhausting to wait for change. To wonder if I will get to see abolition, climate action, reparations, housing for all in my lifetime.
I am tired from being forced to bear witness to so many lives being lost, simply because these systems were not created to preserve us — but built to extract. I am exhausted from witnessing the cognitive dissonance it requires for someone to believe that we have ‘progressed’, when those in power cannot figure out how to provide care for human life. From forced shortages of protective equipment for profit, to delaying proper testing for profit, to an ineffective vaccine distribution plan — what is it all for?
Who is it all for, if not the people?
And what are the rest of us supposed to do?
We need things that feel so out of reach, and yet are too tired to be angry. The swaths of rage inside me from being manipulated by systems and institutions alike for production’s sake are depleted.
I miss seeing my friends, hugging my mom. I miss having energy to throw dinner parties, or even to virtually gather people. I miss the zest of life.
This is both plea and protest.
If we’re entering a new normal: how does it center care? How do we become more considerate to each other’s capacities? In a time of so much loneliness, how do we take care of ourselves, and each other?
How do I cure my burnout if not much in my life materially changes?
In my experiment with resting, with stillness, with seeking meaning in the mundane, I have discovered the lesson that has been following me around for years. It is fitting as we turn the page on this year, and enter the next one. But it is a useful tool at any time.
Let go.
To inhale in grace, kindness, and love — I have to exhale. In order to witness this magic: the meeting of the breath, the in-between, the movement of air, requires stillness. Mindfulness doesn’t come without intention in a world that profits off attention. Stillness doesn’t come easily in a system that requires constant feeding. But there are ways.
I started practicing yin yoga to help my body recover from running marathons. In yin yoga, a floor-based practice, one holds the poses for 2–3 minutes. I was taught that this releases the inner tissue. Every time I transition into a new pose, I am so fidgety, restless, and painfully aware of every second passing as my muscles resist letting go. But after about two minutes, the relief is so welcome.
It takes practice to let go.
In my break of self-preservation: I learned how to practice slowness. It took letting go of lofty ideas (the novel I would write, the research I would do) — in order to discover how to listen. What a gift to see things as they are; to witness without judging my own needs, and learning how to meet the moment. It has taken rituals of shedding: perfectionism, the desire to perform, the itching need to prove myself. It is fleeting, and a constant journey, but I am learning to let go.
This practice has pleasantly surprised me with an infusion of new energy, new ideas, a fresh way to approach things. It’s making space to get deeper in my craft. It’s allowed me to listen to others, and to hold the space for them.
For years, my favorite poem was “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop — an ode to losing.
“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
It’s a helpful frame on a personal sense: to be fluid, to be whole in myself, and open.
But I would like to see the collective win. Perhaps if we could let go of some of these systems: hyper productivity and optimizing the wrong things, we could figure out how to infuse newness into our lives and our society.
What if we could let go of this narrow idea of success, let go of this calcified way of being, let go of trying to quantify everything? Maybe then we could find the edge, and even push beyond it.
It’s going to be uncomfortable at first, but as we dig a little deeper and sink into our intuition, we have the power to create so much magic.
