Be Nice to Yourself
Burnout, motivation, & maybe some other things
Been a while since I’ve been on here, I know. There were a lot of moments where I thought about writing or texted myself an idea to write about several times since my last post, but the moment I actually had time to, I didn’t have any motivation left. Even worse because posting monthly is on my “2026 Bingo Sheet” and now I’ve missed the first 4 (maybe 5, by the time I get around to posting this?) months of the year. (How will my 2026 goals recover from this?)
But life has been busy, work has been tough, and it has kind of felt like the world is on fire, so I’m going to forgive myself for the break and be proud of myself for starting again.
I think my (perhaps not so) little break has also reminded me of something important related to burnout (which maybe starts at work/school, but doesn’t stop there) and motivating yourself. At the end of the work day, the last thing I want to do is switch from my work screen to my fun screen, even if it’s something I know I’ll enjoy. Sometimes it takes everything out of me to wake up for my job and do it, and then there is nothing left to devote to things that I want to do for fun.
I say this to highlight: burnout is tough and it leaks into all aspects of your life. Obviously my job is not the only career path that experiences this, but certainly people in this field do, especially those of us whole feel that we have something we need to prove - whether that be because of gender or something else. It makes it hard to do the things you love or the new things you want to try because there’s not enough energy left to get to those things.
For a while, I was beating myself up about that. Instead of being kind to myself and allowing myself the space I needed, I got frustrated and I wasn’t very kind to myself. And in the end, that probably made the problem worse; even in the moments where I felt like I could maybe do something (write, work on a personal project, start a new hobby), I had built up so much pressure around it that I couldn’t get started. Now, as I’m sitting here and typing this out, I’m constantly reminding myself that however this piece turns out, it’s okay. You can’t get up the mountain without taking the first step, and this is hopefully my first step up.
