Why Burnout is Your New BFF
There are certain things that get a bad rap that they don’t always deserve. Potatoes. Gen Z. Pitbulls (Not to be confused with Pitbull, who deserves the bad rap <— see what I did there?. . . I’ll show myself out.)
And Burnout.
I know this is a controversial stance, especially when it seems like the entire world is galloping around shrieking about the importance of self-care like some lavender-infused banshees. But hear me out.
I love stories. Tell me a good story and I’ll legit swoon like I did that time in high school when the college guy we all called “Hot Jesus” (you will not convince me that wasn’t his real name) smiled at me at the gas station.
Stories are how I make sense of things.
Possibly my favorite evolutionary leap in modern storytelling happened in 2014. It revolved around the TV show True Detective—and what it helped legitimize. (We are, of course, talking about season one. We do not speak of “season two.” It never happened. It’s the Season That Must Not Be Named.)
It’s not just that True Detective was written, acted, filmed, directed, and scored to near perfection. It was that it burned hot and it burned bright. And then it was over.
It wasn’t sustainable. And that’s what made it so perfect.
The rise of new media platforms has made this kind of limited-run storytelling normal, even common. Gone are the days where the options were:
films with run times too short to get into the chick-a-bow-wow juicy stuff like character development
sickly saccharine TV miniseries
or shows that dragged on so far past their use-by date that they grew blue-green fuzz too thick to scrape off
But it took someone volunteering to be the sacrificial supernova to make it happen (or in this case, a group of someones possessing the kind of talent that can swallow a mere mortal whole).
Even shows that do have multiple seasons now choose episode counts that serve the story arcs rather than water them down until they’re as exciting as fifth-day leftovers. (Lots of old food metaphors this week.)
Stories were given permission to be the size and shape that they were meant to be.
The result is better stories.
This isn’t a narrative theory course (I totally want to teach a narrative theory course!) so I’ll shut up about all that now. But it does illustrate my point.
Sometimes it’s okay to be all-consumed—to put everything you’ve got into something until you’ve got nothing left. Sometimes it’s okay to burnout in service of burning hot.
Of course this isn’t true of all things. But some things. The right things.
Our lives are weird right now. Upside down and inside out. No one knows what day it is or when wearing pants will once again be a social expectation. I’m not going to pretend that things aren’t difficult. But I refuse to pretend I’m not also excited to see what people will create out of this experience. We’ve never had this kind of opportunity to start doing things differently.
What have you wanted to do but were stuck in “the way things are done” mode over? What status quo needs a shakeup? What rabbit are you feeling called to chase to the center of the earth?
Consider this your permission slip to burnout.
Take a sip from your Big Hug Mug and go, go, go!
Burn big, burn bright, burn out. Then bask in the afterglow.