Conflagration

I don’t think I really know when it happened—the “burnout”. It’s not something that happens all at once. Maybe you see it coming, you start to spot the signs. Or, if you’re like me, you don’t know it’s happened until months or years after being mired in the after-effects. I would slip… in… and out, of the conscious realization that I was indeed burned out. There were times I found myself very lucid, entirely aware of how burned out I had become. Through other spans of time I managed to disassociate entirely. How long was I there? I can’t honestly say. The entire lifecycle from burning out, to burned out, to realizing I was burned out, to recovery, is not a straight path, and not one that has some known, or widely-accepted timescale. Come to think of it, I really haven’t seen many accounts of severe burnout. I suppose that’s because those who experience it are likely too burned out to write about it. So, am I back? Hah! It’s not that simple unfortunately. But I am in a place where I feel that I can share my experience.