lazy bones (notes on burnout recovery)

Unsolidified habit fades away over time.

I dream of living in adherence to at least some semblance of a self-enforced routine but as soon as I gain the agency, I lose all momentum. These days I’ve been bullet journaling, but even that can be a hollow façade, a way to placate my need for productivity by drawing little boxes on the last page of my journal.

Then some other unexpected happening of the day announces itself and I get diverted (or divert myself) from two or three (or all) of my desired habits.

I find myself half-assing something like meditation, and wonder whether it counts or not. I try not to pressure myself too much or to feel bad about skipping a day (or two weeks) of something. Seeing the gap in my squares either inspires me to pick it back up if it’s still important to me, or to take it off the list so that I have more time for other things.

Maybe it’s because I’m a dreamer by nature that this routine of keeping lists and commonplace books and bullet journals have become a way for me to ground myself in reality.

I have the tendency toward entropy, which gets chaotic during certain stages, especially when left unchecked. Yesterday morning was spent working on the data architecture for a coding project, the morning before I was doing some lettering. This morning I felt like a zombie. (I guess that’s fitting because halloween is tomorrow.)

I’m working on it though. Baby steps. Yesterday I thought of dubbing the period of life I am going through “burnout hangover”. After several years, the longest period of burnout of my life, I am finally experiencing glimpses of recovery. Though I’m still having ups and downs, my average level of operation is so much better than it was even a year ago.

For a lot of my life, managing burnout has been a lot like fumbling around in the dark, while also underwater. Once I self identified as AuDHD, everything started to make sense. The more that I learned, the deeper I dove into the research and the online community, I was able to start understanding more deeply why my brain operates in the way that it does.

It’s still tricky to stay balanced. Rest is something I spend a huge amount of time trying to do, and a disproportionately small amount of time doing effectively. I’m also still struggling to get consistent exercise. On the other hand, I’ve been writing a lot and meditating a lot. I’ve been reading more lately too.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the day to day that I start to forget how far I’ve come, even if there’s still a lot further to go.

For now I’ll focus on the small wins.