Fighting Burnout

The end part of a drive is always the hardest part for me. It doesn’t really matter how long the drive itself is. If I’m going on an hour drive, then I begin to get antsy at the 45 minute mark. If I’m on an 8 hour drive, then the last hour or so will be rough, but I breeze through that 45 minute mark. (This is one of the reasons that I try to trick my mind when I go on trips. I say to myself that an 8 hour trip will be 10 hours, and I keep focused on that 10 hour mark the entire trip. Surprisingly, this actually works for me. Perhaps I’m just that good at deluding myself.)

It’s been a tough semester. Denisa’s been teaching three classes and tutoring students, we’ve had multiple renovation projects going on, I’ve had writing deadlines to worry about, I’m pushing my diet hard, and I’ve gotten a new calling at church that’s keeping me on my toes. And I’ve been handling it all pretty well, more or less. But the closer we get to the end of the semester, the harder it seems to have gotten. This past week there have been multiple times when I just have felt like I have nothing left in the tank. I’m persisting on sheer will power alone, and there’s not much of that left, either.

It’s not a pleasant feeling to have. Some of it must be because I know I’m going on vacation soon. I’m at the tail end of the drive, and I’ve hit the point where I know I’m almost done, and so it’s the hardest to keep going.

At times like this, I try to think of what I would tell someone else if they came to me asking for advice on how to handle it. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You can lighten up for a few days and be just fine. This is a marathon, not a sprint.” But it’s one thing to know what the advice would be, and quite another to actually follow it. The thing that I’m having to push on the most the past bit is my writing. I get home from work and am just fried. I have pretty much no desire to do anything other than read a book, watch a movie, or sleep. But I know I have writing to do, and so I plop myself down in a chair and get it done. I always feel better having done it, but I wish I could feel better when I’m actually in the process of writing.

I didn’t really set out to complain about stuff in this  post. Many many things are going great, and I have to remind myself of that. But the end part of a drive is always the hardest part for me, and that vacation can’t come soon enough.

Speaking of which, I’m hereby stepping back from the blog for tomorrow and all of next week. This is me, giving myself permission to not blog if I don’t want to. If I have something I really want to say, I’ll pop on here and say it, but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me until the 27th. I’ll be on Facebook. You can catch me over there.