“Burnout as a Lifestyle”
 An essay from Professionally Confused Since 1992 — Entry Three

Things That Have Burned Me Out, In No Particular Order:

• Student teaching. And then actual teaching. And then quitting. And then going back. And then quitting again.
  
• Staying late at school to make the classroom feel like a home, only to be told by administration that I needed to improve my “time management.”
  
• Getting COVID and teaching through it. Teaching during BLM. Teaching after Hurricane Sally. Teaching during everything and nothing.
  
• Working in schools where we were told to make magic out of trauma. Where we were told to teach kids how to regulate before they’d even been given enough food or safety or sleep.
  
• Helping other people regulate their nervous systems while mine was on fire.
  
• Every single professional development session about “self-care” while being given fewer resources and more students.
  
• Learning to love my students deeply and having to say goodbye over and over again.
  
• Law firms that said “we’re like a family” and then made me talk to 90 people a day while smiling through panic attacks.
  
• Being autistic and masking for so long I forgot what I actually wanted and who I was doing all this for.
  
• Pretending to be okay so convincingly that no one noticed when I wasn’t.
  

---

Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse.
Sometimes it looks like showing up every day with a smile you carved out of your own skin.
Sometimes it looks like organizing the fridge while dissociating.
Sometimes it looks like daydreaming about an illness just bad enough to force a pause.

You don’t just have burnout.
You become it.
You become the shell that keeps moving. The autopilot. The expert in pretending.

---

The Aftermath

• The emptiness after quitting. The way silence hums louder when you’re no longer useful to someone else.
  
• Staring at walls, wondering who I am without a job to orbit around. Without a crisis to manage. Without a fire to throw myself into.
  
• People asking, “So what’s next?” like I didn’t just crawl out of a burning building.
  
• The shame spiral of rest. Of stillness. Of needing time and not being able to earn it.
  
• Trying to “get better” fast enough to make the burnout worth it. To justify the collapse.
  
• Grieving the person I had to be to survive. And also grieving the people who still expect me to be her.
  
• Losing access to joy because everything feels like it could become a job again if I’m not careful.
  
• Forgetting what it feels like to want something. Not just tolerate it. Not just endure it. Want it.
  

The aftermath is quiet, but it isn’t peaceful.
It’s disorienting.
Like waking up in a stranger’s house with no memory of how you got there.
Like realizing you’ve been surviving on emergency mode for years, and now you can’t remember your own favorite color.

---

Recovery isn’t a glow-up.
It’s crying because you finally feel safe enough to feel anything.
It’s staring at a blank calendar and feeling your nervous system twitch with withdrawal.
It’s learning to rest without bargaining.
It’s mourning all the years you pushed through instead of pausing.

---

But here’s what I know now:

Burnout is not a personal failure.
It’s not a weakness.
It’s not proof that you weren’t strong enough.

It’s the body’s last attempt at protection.
It’s your spirit throwing a wrench into the machine.
It’s your soul saying: This is not sustainable. This is not love. This is not life.

---

So no, I don’t have a five-year plan.
I don’t know what my next job title will be.
But I do know I don’t want to live a life that requires me to be exhausted in order to feel valuable.

I want to live slowly.
I want to rest without guilt.
I want softness without scarcity.
I want joy that isn’t mined from pain.

Maybe I won’t have a resume that makes sense.
Maybe I’ll never climb a ladder.
But I’m learning that surviving isn’t the same as living.
And I’m tired of surviving.

I want to build a life where I don’t have to burn out to belong.
Where I am allowed to be whole, even if I’m not productive.
Where warmth isn’t a job requirement—it’s just who I am, freely given, finally kept.