Burnout is real

Hey there, I haven't been on here for a number of months. I feel bad about that. But for a while I haven't felt like I've had anything super important to say. This platform came out of a need for me to do something at the beginning of the pandemic but also a place to put all my long winded thoughts. Don't get me wrong, I still have those long winded thoughts, but it has gotten harder to notate them, to get them out of my brain and into anything else. It's gotten harder to scream into the abyss in an eloquent way. I've been filled with anger, exhaustion, sadness, numbness, and various other emotions and feelings I can't quite name.

For the past couple years it has been a constant exhaustion. Blame it on a mix of the global pandemic, racism, growth, hormones, being in my 20s, anxiety, depression, introversion, not enough exercise, too much time indoors, whatever. Motivation got hard. Being productive, or as productive as I've always felt I needed to be, got hard. I'm not one who is super good with rest. I rest and get super lazy but feel really guilty about it. And it's arguable as to whether it's real rest or not, because I have this nagging feeling that I need to keep moving forward and doing something with my life. But so much is out of my control.

Anyway, I don't quite know what I'm here to say but I have just graduated and now have a Bachelor's degree (woohoo!). It feels like the first chapter of my life is closing and now it's time to move on. Or keep moving. So far, that has been hard. It feels like a lot of waiting. Waiting for people to answer my emails (or not - it's been a lot of silence from job applications and audition submissions etc). I'm constantly fighting the urge to just give up on everything. Or maybe not even fighting but trying not to completely succumb to it. It seems like we, as a world, as a society, are starting to get back to a different sense of “normal” with COVID being (sort of) under control. So the expectations come back. I can't keep using the pandemic as an excuse. But I'm still angry and exhausted by the pandemic.

What bothers me and freaks me out the most is that I can’t predict anything. I feel like I have very little control over what is next for me. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know. I think it’s half true. I am in a position where I have nothing to my name. I got some basic training and experience in my field, in performing, in music theatre, in writing, but I have no evidence that I am good at what I do. I have no professional credits to my name. It has been sending out emails that I never hear back about. It’s me racking my brain about what it is I even want to do. It's me wondering if the reason I'm not invited into rooms is because I'm Asian, or a female, or a blonde female Asian, or just not good enough (even though I haven't had a chance to prove myself yet). The months and years of burnout and constant exhaustion tell me that I don't want to do anything. That I can't do anything. That I'm incapable of doing anything great. It's the spiralling into the images of what my failed life could be. I KNOW this is just the beginning. I’ve only been out of school for 2 months. I don’t need to be right in the thick of something else just yet. I don't know if I even have the energy to be right in the thick of something new. But it’s terrifying to not know what’s next. I have all these thoughts of travelling and moving somewhere else. Starting a chapter somewhere else with this new freedom. I’m not tied down to anything. No job, no lease, nothing. But I am also in that graduation phase of “I have no money and no job”, so how financially irresponsible can I be? How long will it take me to "land on my feet"? Or to figure out what it is I can be doing for the next few years or however long. It’s the crisis that strikes me practically every day.

Back on the topic of burnout, I have never napped more in my life than the past couple years. It's just constant exhaustion, even from doing nothing. I don't like it. It's hard. But as the weather gets better and I try to make the most of what my next chapter of life looks like, hopefully I'll figure it out. I know tons of my friends are feeling these same things too. We are entering a period of life that is new and uncertain and unsteady. There is so much we don't understand. There is so much we can't control. Some of us are lucky to have booked incredible gigs or jobs, and it often feels like everyone except me is succeeding, but that's not true. We're all lost. Some people are just better at hiding their panic than I am. (I'm terrible at it. I only panic. If I'm panicked, you'll know.)

I don't exactly know why I'm writing this or who would even care enough to read it but here I am. At the same time as BTS are closing their first chapter, so am I. What's next for these 7 men as a group and as individuals will be beautiful, so I can only hope that it will be the same for me. One of the songs that has resonated with me these past couple years has been BTS' "Black Swan". It's about burnout, and artistic doubt/artistic burnout in particular. This is what I have felt. There's a whole other conversation and article about my feelings on BTS and their burnout and how they were supposed to shift focus/take this "break" (it's actually not a break at all) 2 years ago when Map Of The Soul: 7 came out, but that's for another day.

So, to summarize where I'm at in my life, here are a few BTS lyrics that hit home:

"Moving On"

이사 가자 Let’s move

정들었던 이곳과는 안녕 Goodbye to this place that we became attached to

이사 가자 Let’s move

이제는 더 높은 곳으로 Now to a higher place

텅 빈 방에서 마지막 짐을 들고 나가려다가 As taking the last box from the empty room

잠시 돌아본다 I look back for a moment

울고 웃던 시간들아 이젠 안녕 Times when we cried and laughed, goodbye now

(Credit to https://doolsetbangtan.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/moving-on/)

"Yet To Come"

Was it honestly the best?

Cause I just wanna see the next

[...]

My moment is yet to come