Something’s Got to Give
At 15:36 I slammed my head on the desk, folded my arms over it, and stayed there. Thirty minutes. I wasn’t quite crying, but I was close. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Finished. Done. Over.
I’d spent days thinking about what the hell I was doing with my time, and somewhere in there I started talking to myself. Then yelling. Then kicking at the mountain of tasks in front of me, spitting curses at it, and it just kept growing. More came with every complaint. I was drowning in things I couldn’t even clearly describe.
You hear about burnout from colleagues and friends. They complain and then they collapse, and your instinct is to tell them to take a week off—you just overworked yourself a little, that’s all. Toughen up, stop whining. But it was starting to make sense to me.
Everyone wanted something. Answers. Copy. PR statements. Designs. Videos. Photos. Decisions. Corrections. Just me, basically. No matter how much I typed into the computer, no matter how many calls and Skype sessions, it never stopped. Technical problems, legal problems, people problems. And then just hate. Pure hate for all of it.
I wanted to scream fuck you all,
but I couldn’t, because I’d put myself here. I’d wanted this somehow. And they couldn’t help the fact that I’d taken on too much. So I kept going, and with every email, every checkbox crossed off, three more appeared. Four. Five. A sump of tasks, drowning me.
The obvious moves: parties, sex, alcohol, drugs, friends—anything to make it bearable. I burned it all out at parties, I had fun with people, and the moment I sat back down in front of the computer and saw the red-numbered pile of messages and wishes and expectations, I wanted to smash my head right through the screen.
It became clear something had to give when I started getting mean. Rocking back and forth in my chair like something was broken in me. Constantly asking myself what the point was, if it would ever get better, if I’d killed the fun part forever or if this was just temporary brain damage. The laptop had eaten my soul.
I don’t have a solution yet. And the self-help books and talks with friends can’t make the decision for me. Can’t tell me what comes next, how to actually change this without either blowing it all up or just lying down and letting this giant pulsing thing made of bits and bytes consume me.
The end of the year feels like the time to ease off. Take a vacation. Pull back. Maybe actually exercise for once. Figure out what’s wrong—with me, or with the world, I’m not sure which. Not slamming my head on the desk anymore. That would be a start.