This piece is about burnout. It’s about waking up at night covered in sweat because your body is trying to metabolize all of the cortisol out of your system.

It’s about rubbing your gnarled hands after a day of cracking at the keyboard and wondering if you’re going to have rheumatoid arthritis by the time you’re 35.

It’s about sitting on the T at the end of the day and rubbing your lymph nodes which are the size of golf balls, and wondering if you should take the next day off to just… sleep.

…

I’m the type of person that’s type-a and needs to be doing things all the time otherwise I feel useless. Worse than that, I get stressed that I’m not achieving.

That’s why this piece is so important to me.

Each of the cards in this work is…. well….. kind of shitty. Each of them started out with great promise, but because I didn’t have it in me to finish it in the time period that I had allotted myself I rushed, I got frustrated, and I just drew to get done with it, and go to sleep.

To me, burnout is when you just don’t have it in you. Even if you love what you do, I think all of us get to the bottom of the barrel where we’re scraping for some creativity, for some inspiration, for some discipline to get the things done.

Too many of us keep scraping.

This piece is a reminder that when you’re worn our, when you’re spread to thin, when your brain is fragile and needs to take a break… Just do it.

You’re not a machine. You’re a human being that needs rest, that needs to take 9 hours a night to recharge, that needs that “down time” that we all as people tend to deprive ourselves on a daily basis, both because we feel the need to succeed and because our working environments these days in America are kind of… shitty.

It’s ok to stop. Tell yourself that. Or, tell your boss. If you don’t let yourself rest, or if your boss doesn’t allow you to take the breather that you desperately need then it’s time to re-evaluate where you’re at in life.

Don’t let yourself burn out.