fabricated emotions

Burnout is hard and can provide odd surprises.

Recently I attended an event which turned out to be much more involved than advertised.  By the time I returned home that afternoon - I was really tired, but felt OK (or so I thought).

A couple of days later; a neighbour asked me about something which had taken in place in our road that earlier day (afternoon) when I arrived home from that event - had I noticed anything out of the ordinary in the neighbourhood? 

I hadn't - but said I would check car dash cam / home CCTV - in case it had caught something out of place.

Yes, I spotted an unfamiliar twin-cab pick-up truck mooching around (up and down) our usually very quiet road (so I updated the neighbour with the timestamp in case other cars / households security systems could be more quickly checked around that time too.

Something else was really striking to me: in CCTV:as I pottered around unloading the car etc. I didn't just look tired - I seemed to look dejected / depressed ) fed up and totally exhausted.  I was not aware of that myself at the time - just tired - I had thought.

I didn't realise it at the time - but I had clearly over done it persevering with that more demanding than expected event.

Lesson learnt: in / exiting burnout - assume less capacity then I might feel at the time.

Application: this week, at a subsequent event - in the early stages of the event I mucked-in like everyone else.  However, as the time wore on; I found a quieter seating area and switched over into "showed up" mode rather than being too busy for the whole time. 

When I got home I was still pretty tired - but (unlike the previous event) - I didn't end up needing to overcome a bout of illness too.

Burnout is hard and can provide odd surprises.

Recently I attended an event which turned out to be much more involved than advertised.  By the time I returned home that afternoon - I was really tired, but felt OK (or so I thought).

A couple of days later; a neighbour asked me about something which had taken in place in our road that earlier day (afternoon) when I arrived home from that event - had I noticed anything out of the ordinary in the neighbourhood? 

I hadn't - but said I would check car dash cam / home CCTV - in case it had caught something out of place.

Yes, I spotted an unfamiliar twin-cab pick-up truck mooching around (up and down) our usually very quiet road (so I updated the neighbour with the timestamp in case other cars / households security systems could be more quickly checked around that time too.

Something else was really striking to me: in CCTV:as I pottered around unloading the car etc. I didn't just look tired - I seemed to look dejected / depressed ) fed up and totally exhausted.  I was not aware of that myself at the time - just tired - I had thought.

I didn't realise it at the time - but I had clearly over done it persevering with that more demanding than expected event.

Lesson learnt: in / exiting burnout - assume less capacity then I might feel at the time.

Application: this week, at a subsequent event - in the early stages of the event I mucked-in like everyone else.  However, as the time wore on; I found a quieter seating area and switched over into "showed up" mode rather than being too busy for the whole time. 

When I got home I was still pretty tired - but (unlike the previous event) - I didn't end up needing to overcome a bout of illness too.

Thanks for sharing this! I’m realising that even though I’m coming out of burnout a bit, I realise that it’s still overwhelming for social situations for me. And I have to find moments to get a break as well