I'm burned out.
I literally have an official diagnosis, with an ICD number, for a mental health condition caused by capitalism and neoliberalism themselves.
Thanks to my doctor's note, I'm able to take 15 days off from work so I can recover. However, recovering isn't as easy as "just resting".
I mean, can you actually rest? Thinking about work, it puts a lot of pressure on you to the point where you need to decompress. But you don't "decompress" because of your mental health, or because you'll explode otherwise. You rest so you can be productive on the next day.
The thing is, capitalism will never let you rest anymore. That's why I've been valuing the analogic world so much. I miss actually reading and not craving for notifications all day. I miss watching a movie and not TikToks. I miss not spending my whole day, or night, scrolling through Instagram.
Mostly because of the pandemics, I've been feeling this feeling of Languishing.
Languishing
I love it when I find the name for something. I was watching Christian Dunker's video on Burnout [1] and he mentions this feeling of apathy that many people have been feeling during the pandemic. There's also an article by Adam Grant on the NYT [2] about it.
I've realized that I cannot do things that once gave me such pleasure, such as playing games (are they too boring/difficult/ time-consuming or is it just me?), watching movies (it has always been very hard for me to watch movies, but I used to try my best to actually watch something), reading books (I used to read a lot on the train going back home and it was such a great activity, but now it's just too difficult to do).
Everything looks dull, everything sounds boring.
Navigating through this
One thing I've been doing to try to navigate this is to do things I can enjoy without wasting the small amount of energy I have, and just starting them. Starting something is the biggest leap I can take. I often take the car with my dad to practice my driving skills, I started writing stuff (like this blog), and I started publishing my music, albeit very raw and badly mixed, to Bandcamp.
Aside from that, taking these days off from work will definitely help.
Also, the best thing I did through these years of pandemics is to nurture friendships and love. Love is very important for me, and love can exist in different shapes and sizes. It's not just romantic love, but self-love, self-compassion, comprehension, understanding my limits and capabilities and making friends.
As a closing thought, I believe writing, even though occasionally badly and breaking a couple of grammatical rules, is one of the best ways I found to organize my thoughts and make me less anxious in this chaotic world.