As we finish the midterm season, we have two more weeks until Thanksgiving break and less than six weeks until finishing the fall semester. The countdown to being finished this semester has been ticking in my mind for a break.

 Recently, I’ve been feeling tremendously stressed out and tired. I have been having trouble getting to my classes on time, feeling engaged, and keeping up with my load. I have been facing a bit of a roadblock with what I want to write about for this post. After getting through half of the week (Wednesday as I write this), I realize that my roadblock for the post stems from two causes: trying to outdo my previous posts and burnout. 

For some context, I have always been known as a workaholic. In high school, I was class president, their salutatorian, took many APs, was heavily involved in school, volunteered a lot and I was working. Yet, when I got to college, I am barely involved in any club. I’m just here for a degree, sometimes for friends. I don’t know why exactly I’m not that involved on campus, maybe it’s because I’m a commuter or because I didn’t reach out enough. But maybe it’s because I always did everything with 100% effort, and now I simply want to chill. Does that make me lazy? To not want to put the energy into other organizations on campus and take on responsibilities that will help my resume? 

Lazy. That’s a loaded word. It has a negative connotation; that I’m unmotivated and unwilling to do anything. But I want to, I honestly don’t have the energy to right now. 

I think one of the biggest topics that have resonated with me in this class was Karl Marx’s labor and the body. I still think about it and how our worth is defined by how much we produce and that our bodies aren’t really our own. But I feel like I produced so much that I’m at the point of diminishing returns. The more work I give does not feel like it’s worth the overall energy I previously put into it.

So how do you get over burnout? It’s not just a self-care weekend, although a break would be nice. It’s actually stress management. It isn’t that I’m not doing enough, it’s that I’m doing too much. My burnt-out bulb just needs to be replaced. You don’t keep using a dying bulb, you replace it. How I’m approaching my work isn’t working as well as it used to. I need a change of pace and I need to lighten my load. I need to accept that I am burnt out right now, and I’m not simply lazy. I have to listen to my body crying for help before it takes a break for me.