On Burnout.

I haven't been posting much here for a while. Or anywhere, really. And that's been due to a few different things, but really there's been one main culprit - burnout.

There used to be just plain old burnout. But now - now, we have different flavours.

When most people talk about burnout, they're talking about work. And that's certainly a chunk of it. But there's also autistic burnout, which is something I've only learned about more recently, and something I'm still trying to figure out how long I've been dealing with. I'm not going to go into detail about it here, but this is one post that shows up prominently from a quick Google search that seems to explain it decently. TL;DR - when we get overly drained from masking and the like. If you're familiar with the spoons metaphor, when we use too many spoons too often.

I think I might have had various levels of autistic burnout for a couple of years now, maybe more. Some seem to suggest it's an almost constant thing, it's just more about how bad it is. For me, it feels like it's been particularly bad over the past few months or so, but I've had a few waves back and forth over the last while I think.

The difficulty is, I can't really do one of the main things you'd usually do to help burnout - take time off. Have a break. I don't have the leave or the money to be doing that. Though I'll essentially be taking a week off on the week of my show (which you should come see and you can get tickets here) - which will be something, I guess? And maybe if a lot of people come and see my show, I'll have enough money to have a bit more time off. But more likely it will just give me a little bit to add to my currently-rather-low-savings.

What else could I be doing? Well, spending more time doing things that I do enjoy. And I'm trying to. I've got a musical I'm doing rehearsals for, and I'm loving the opportunity to sing and dance again. (I really love dancing.) I've got a show at Sydney Fringe coming up, so I'm practicing my music for that. Trying to catch up and see friends where I can. Would be nice to do games more often? I have a lot of boardgames sitting on my shelf. Unfortunately there's not really a good spot at the new place to do boardgames :( No good gaming table.

The main other thing I can think of is finding different work. Trying to find work that isn't as draining for me. And I am starting to look. But the process of finding work in itself can often be rather draining. So that's not exactly a fast solution.

Right now - I'm working on getting through each day. That's about as far as I'm able to look ahead, many days. Which can make things rather difficult. But that's what I've got to work with......