Burning out and finding out
At the time of this writing I’m burned out. I had no doubt it was a thing and that it could happen to anyone. However, I couldn’t see myself suffering from this. At least not so soon.
Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It’s the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure. — Source
I’ve been pretty active for the past 4 to 5 years due to college, courses, work and other activities. Yet all of this haven’t bothered me in the slightest, until now. I couldn’t take control of basic chores, missed the point of meetings after a few moments, had no will to leave the bed and many other things. Moreover, It’s a strange feeling with predefined steps:
- You know what you have to do;
- You know it’s within your capabilities;
- You get excited to do the task;
- Your body just will not do it.
There you go, you now have the recipe to fight against yourself for a whole day. This will be a excruciating battle until you hit the bed and repeat it the next morning. That is, if you aren’t already going to sleep late due to forcing yourself to be productive throughout the day. Realizing I was battling my own was really important to improve my situation. I started by cleaning my room, then exercising, putting a alarm to tell me when to eat and so on. My next step was to change my whole environment by looking after a new job.
Currently I’m not in position to take a sabbatical period of time to discover new hobbies or a new career - and I don’t want to, as I love my current profession. So, what’s left to ponder to change this situation, I may ask myself? To be honest, I have no clue. While I’m in the process to land a new job I feel that this might be the response I needed to this feeling. New challenges, new people, new technologies and new everything.