The Burnout Pit - Part II

When ordering sushi makes you hide in the bathroom.

It was the arrival of the sushi that made me realise I was in burnout.

As I tracked the little car on my Uber Eats app, very much looking forward to my standard order of miso soup, ebi shumai, and a spicy tuna maki roll, a growing sense of dread swelled inside me.

I wouldn’t be able to answer the door.

I’m an introvert—a very social introvert, but an introvert none-the-less. When I attend writing conferences or reader events I have the time of my life while I’m there and promptly fall into a heap for three days upon returning home. I relish waking up before my husband and starting the day with a quiet coffee and uninterrupted thinking time. I fully embrace the concept of “people points” and taking care of my social battery.

This wasn’t simply a moment of low social battery, however. This was something else.

As the car drew closer, I began to panic about having to open the door and receive the order. It’s ridiculous for a few reasons. One, most of the time the delivery drivers pop the order down and head straight back into the elevator before I even make it to the door. Two, even if they do wait for the door to open, it’s not like they’re looking to hang around and have a chat.

Still, even thinking about possibility of having to make eye contact with the delivery driver caused me to completely seize up.

Feeling overly dramatic and, frankly, rather stupid, I made an excuse about needing to go to the bathroom and left my phone with my husband so he could buzz the driver in and answer the door. Then I went and hid in our ensuite until I heard the telltale sound of knocking and my husband singing out that food had arrived.

This was just one instance in a growing list of weirdly difficult things. Things that previously had felt completely normal and fine and that I did without thinking. Like…

· Listening to podcasts (they cluttered my brain and I had the concentration span of a gnat anyway.)

· Choosing a new book to read (decision paralysis plagued me daily.)

· Reading said book (see aforementioned issue about concentrating.)

· Replying to emails (literally couldn’t force myself to do it.)

· Choosing a date for an appointment, like a haircut (I was out of decision points before I’d even had my morning coffee.)

· Hosting my friends at our apartment for dinner (I felt exhausted just writing the grocery list.)

· Answering questions about what I wanted to eat for dinner or what I wanted to do on the weekend (just no).

Deciding which Nespresso pod to use took up all my decision points.

Prior to all this I would’ve described myself as a reasonably high energy person. My husband is the one who loves to sleep in and take nap on the weekends and I’m like a Jack Russel, bouncing around, desperate to get outside and do something. Let’s go to a café! Let’s go for a walk! Let’s go to the park!

But I was tired. The kind of tired that feels like it seeps into your bones and starts to corrode you from the inside. Nothing got me excited. I spent my days trying as hard as I could to convince everyone, most of all myself, that I was fine. Whenever anyone suggested therapy, I would jokingly say “you know I don’t like being told what to do.”

Something in me had died.

My lack of productivity felt shameful. Not because I buy into hustle culture or any bullshit like that. I don’t. But there is deeply ingrained wiring in me that tells me if I’m not working myself to the bone then I am failing.

I know where it comes from. I’m a child of an immigrant family and I grew up hearing “your nonno and nonna gave up everything to come to this country so you and your sister could have a better life.” This was usually followed by, “so you need to do well in school.” I was the first grandchild to go to university (which felt more like a foretold prophecy than a choice I actively made) and my whole life I was pushed to reach as far as possible, never quite satisfying my loving but impossible-to-please grandfather.

Seriously, when I graduated high school in the top 18% of my state he asked me if I thought I should repeat so I could do better. No word of a lie.

My grandfather in the mid-1950’s about to board a ship to come to Australia

Now here I was loafing around. Avoiding work. Playing Magic the Gathering when I should have been writing. Choosing to let the washing pile up another day. Leaving dishes in the sink overnight. Going out for a coffee instead of plotting a new book. Scrolling on my phone instead of reading.

Guilt was a thumb pressed to my windpipe.

My husband was back at work and doing his own version of recovery—trying to make up for the months he lost being sick by diving deep and long back into his career. He was desperate to get back normal and put the whole ordeal behind us. I, however, was contemplating walking away from my author career and getting a job in a yarn shop. I drafted (but didn’t send) an email to my agent telling her I was sorry I was a bad client and that we should part ways. I would read my bad reviews to punish myself.

“The author phoned it in.”

“I was so bored.”

“Who even published this?”

Never mind the literal thousands of great reviews from people who really enjoyed my work—reading those didn’t suit the narrative that I was a failure. A hack. That I should never have given up my lucrative corporate communications career to focus on fiction.

Then I started having working lunches with a friend of mine, who also worked remotely. She’s an extrovert, loves being around people and hates being stuck in the house. We found a café with a laptop area and good coffee and started meeting one every other week or so. At first we got little work done, especially me.

Little cup energy.

Then one day I did the thing I had been avoiding: I told her how I really felt. Like, tears in public, smudged mascara, said the quiet part out loud. I was vulnerable.

And that was the beginning of getting out of the pit.