For me, the warning sign is deep cynicism. I don’t often have trouble showing up to do my job. I’ll be there on Sunday mornings to preach and I’ll clock my hours. But I won’t feel good about it.
In fact, I’ll be rather Ecclesiastes about the whole thing. I’ll be thinking about the eventually heat death of the universe. I’ll be just silently, internally despairing.
Apparently this is what they mean by burnout.
Honestly, burnout is a buzzy enough term that I’m not sure what people mean when they’re talking about it. There are some helpful formal definitions out there if you go looking and you better believe I read them all at 1:30 in the morning. I even read Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle to try and get a better grasp on it. For me though, the most helpful thing I learned was that to be burnt out you don’t have to totally collapse. You might show up to work. You just might also despair.
So there I was despairing, but I was also angry. You can add that to the list of possible burnout signs. For me the warning flag was how I was feeling about my financial compensation. A not so fun fact about clergy salaries is that we tend to be paid in vastly disproportionate ways. Clergy salaries are often funded by the wealth of their congregations and I would be happy to tell you about how I feel about our congregational inequalities if you have an open afternoon. All to say, there’s validity if I start getting a little grumpy about my more well-paid colleagues. However, this does not mean I should spend every day in an all consuming rage.
I think you can see the difference.
My whole thing is about living joyfully with multiple vocations. Don’t get it wrong though, it’s not always that joyful. Exhibit A being this summer where I’ve had a few weeks of just low grade, persistent burnout warning signs.
Preachers say this thing about preaching from your scars, not your wounds. I’ve always thought this is pretty good advice. To get into a pulpit and just trauma dump is unadvisable to say the least. I’ve carried over this philosophy into my writing here. Astute readers may have noticed that there wasn’t a post last week. You know why? The post would’ve been something like this: EVERYTHING IS DUMB.1 I wisely decided to wait a week. And, I tried to use my very best self awareness to know that despair, exhaustion, and cynicism are not places to make a home.
It’s hard to not turn this into a moral lesson. The best thing I think is for me to just talk about me and not worry that I’m prescribing you some kind of fix for the overwhelming weight of being alive. Instead, here are the activities that have sponsored this week’s writing.
I drew some weird pictures of cats.
I took a week off of writing an arbitrarily scheduled newsletter.
I listened to jangly music.2
I went on very slow treadmill jogs.
I took Benedryl and slept way better.
I did not just push through it.
And guess what it didn’t fix my life. But it made me just the little bit less cynical. I didn’t have to read a book to know what makes my life sustainable and what makes it feel overwhelming. As it turns out, I’m not going to be around for the heat death of the universe. But I do get to pastor a really cool congregation (who have brought post-church cookies three weeks in a row!) and teach kids who are thrilled when I can play piano music from video games and watch my niece for two whole days in a row because guess who has a flexible work schedule.
With the aid of cat drawings and a stubbornness to find sustainability in a world bent on exploitation, look forward to more mostly weekly reflections. I promise to not just power through.
One helpful tool
Do you find yourself minimizing what you’re feeling and experiencing? I recently went on a hunt to find burnout self-assessments to better track and understand my own experiences. My favorite is this little mini-assessment that comes by way of the Harvard Business Review. Something about a good little chart just settles my spirit. And goodness knows this type of thing isn’t necessary (you probably already know if you’re experiencing burnout) but if you’re like me it can give language and structure to what might otherwise be amorphous.
What I’m reading
Get excited about an upcoming release of the book Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women Without Children. As a childfree woman, my heart rejoiced when reading this. I’ll be offering a full review in an upcoming post, but I can easily tell you to order the book now. The authori, Elizabeth Felicetti, also has a Substack where you can find reflections on life with cancer and great book recommendations.
What life looks like
Arboretum days.
Honestly had this typed out for a second and then remembered the repercussions for sending a blank newsletter to this lovely, but new little community we have here and decided against it.
And you can too! Welcome to the weird world of my Apple Music playlists.
AMAZING and timely article for me. Amen.
Wow! Thanks for mentioning Unexpected Abundance. I love connecting with other women without kids!