Three Stage Burnout

By Patrick, on September 16th, 2008 at 01:23 AM

In high school I was voted “Most Stressed” in the yearbook. The joke was that I was even stressed about getting the honor (I really wanted to be featured in the yearbook.)

In college I was often pulling all-nighters to keep up with the video projects and papers I was writing- everyone does it. I often pulled them more than often towards the end of the semester. One night I was talking with Melanie about it back in college and she sent me an article on the stages of burnout (much like this one.) I read it and walked around self-identifying myself as a stage three mess.

Now I am out in the real world and once again- I am a stage three mess.

I will not get into a lot of detail on this one but I’ve simply been working 6-7 day weeks, and recently I got caught up in a long week of long nights. I’ve been traveling a lot on the weekends- which can be exciting but has been taxing on my free time. I feel like all I do is I work, I go home and I just zone out- what rally bothers me is that I’m struggling to do work on anything other than work. I feel that I struggle to keep up with everything around me. Energy wise I’m just dead. When it comes to my soul battery- I feel it draining. I don’t know how long this is going to last but I have a feel it’s going to be a sprint to the end of the year. Let’s hope I can make the run.

I haven’t been doing a lot to recap but there has been a couple of items. Last weekend I went out with Carolyn and Hillary to Eastern Market. It’s a neighborhood I don’t normally go out in- as we came out of the metro and saw numerous police cars close off 8th street for a drug bust and we realized why that was. It’s definitely a neighborhood I will be exploring further in the future… if I have some time…

This weekend I flew back to Boston for work- I found some time to see a few friends however. Mike, Joe (and his girlfriend Amy), and I went to Fenway Park to see the Blue Jays/Red Sox game. This was my first game at Fenway since I was like 12. I hardly remembered anything about the park so I was excited to have the opportunity to see a game.

Fenway Park is not like the modern era parks like Camden Yards and Nationals Park. It’s clear that the park has a historic character to it. Everything from the uneven corridors to the cramped seating to the confusing layout- throw in the eclectic assortment of refreshment booths and stands and it all comes together to make the interior of the park resemble Coney Island. It was like I was walking on the boardwalk.

The park is smaller than it looks on TV. Mike got us seats in the far right field corner in the grandstand and we still had a good view of the game. Despite the view all of us just threw back the $7 beers and caught up and reminisced. It made me realize how much I miss the good ol’ college days together.

I saw a whole lot of people while I was at the game. While waiting for Mike and Joe to arrive I ran into Melanie who came back home from Pittsburgh. On the T back to my hotel I also ran into Chrissy Liscombe. I swear it’s a small world at Fenway.

Before flying back to DC I had a chance to spend the afternoon with Bill watching football, I saw most of the Jets/Patriots game- it was exciting down to the last minute. I’m thrilled that the Matt Cassel era didn’t start so terrible as it could of. Let’s see how we do down the stretch.

Well this week and weekend I’ll be in DC but I’ll be working a lot as usual, it’s hard to keep it together during times like these but I am determined to stay focused and I know by staying focused and with the support of my friends everything will end up alright.