Full throttle and all fired up
“Born old, die young” — This phrase is lifted from an old little book about Capricorns, my zodiac sign, which I’ve had since I was probably eight, and it stayed with me through all these years. The paradox is uncanny, and the accuracy of those words, I simply cannot deny.
At least in my case, the connotation that young Capricorns would have the tendency to be serious — sometimes to the point of having a stern and cold disposition — is true. People often say their first impression of me is that I look “suplada”, then follow it up with, “pero kalog pala” after the next few encounters.
It has also been said that Capricorns, as they grow older, learn to loosen up and enjoy what others might think are childish things. I turned 26 last month, and, although I won’t consider myself that old yet, I can see the accuracy of this in my life.
In the previous years, in my pursuit of work-life balance and, consequently, a self-care routine, I’ve been learning to let go of the pressure to be perfect, to take as much time as I need to rest and regain composure, and to not rush things in accomplishing the enormous goals I had erected for myself. I am glad to have understood that self-love is also among those which the Little Prince would describe as a “matter of consequence”.
Still, when the world demands so much from you — no matter how well aware you are that you cannot pour from an empty cup — it’s difficult to prioritize the self.
This hit me right smack in the chest in the second week of January, my birthday week. For many months prior to then, I have been working almost non-stop, rendering about 20 hours at work per day, including the weekends and holidays. I thought exerting that much physical and mental effort was no big deal because I loved what I was doing, especially because I loved what I was doing. Then came the mornings when getting out of bed became a struggle; when the very things I used to enjoy, I deplored; and the job on which I take great pride, I repulsed.
It doesn’t take an expert to know I was burned out.
My birthday week coincided with the crunch time for a full-length historical documentary that we were producing. During those days, I wasn’t only emotionally drained but also physical ill-disposed. I got sick, finally. It was my overdue wake-up call.
Burnout seems to be a common term these days, and there’s sadly stigma surrounding its use. I was relieved to see my presently favorite vloggers, the Try Guys, make a video about it and narrate their experiences.
More recently, there seems to be a trend of workaholism and overworking with millennials — or people born between 1981 and 1996 — at the forefront.
Millennial. I first saw the term used in an article on TIME magazine back in 2010. At the time, at least from what I remember, it was used to describe the generation experiencing “exponential” technological advancements. Now, it’s almost like a blanket term for young adults, mostly professionals now, who are stereotyped as lazy, entitled, and spoiled.
I don’t find any of those terms demeaning. I believe some people my age are lazy, entitled, and spoiled. In fact, I myself am lazy, entitled, and spoiled more often than I would like to admit. However, it would be unfair and unjust to box everyone in our age group into those descriptors, as if we’re all one and the same. If anything, I think a general term that could possibly apply to everyone in my generation is this: misunderstood.
Millennials were coming of age when technology was being revolutionized: it was a time of transitioning from bulky desktop computers to portable laptops, from handy pagers to ubiquitous smartphones, from bulky encyclopedias to speedy search engines. The internet has begun to infiltrate people’s consciousness, and social media was starting to catch fire.
We grew up immersed in cyberspace — after all, we witnessed its birth and, perhaps, evolved with it — that we consider the internet to be a safe space. While parents were being difficult to reason with at home, we were free to rant and vent all we want online. In that abstract milieu of technology, a global village, as Marshall McLuhan theorized, blossomed where we find other people who feel the way we do. Amid the angst of puberty, adolescence, and adulthood — all painful passages in life one has to go through — we discover that we are not as isolated and misunderstood as we thought we were.
This was a shared sentiment among participants, mostly young adults, in an internal company meeting I attended sometime last year. After the formal discussions on media ethics, we had a lecturer-initiated, totally unrelated, informal talk about the millennial generation. Our middle-aged lecturers were concerned about how their children, who belong to the same age group as we do, seem to enjoy the company of their friends more than that of their family.
I reckon it’s not only the affinity but also the freedom of expression that we should take into account. Millennials were raised in the belief that education is the key to success. In effect, we learned to work our butts off in school, chasing grades of As, getting depressed over a few mistakes in examinations, and not being able to talk about feelings of failure to our parents. How could we when the weight upon our shoulders were from them?
By the time we get into the world of employment, millennials have become far too idealistic. After all, we didn’t graduate with honors just to land an ordinary job that pays a meager salary.
Our idealism is crushed by the realities of adulthood, of which we weren’t prepared in school. We always thought education is enough, that hard work pays off. In the end, I see many among us decide to return where our comforts lie: in the academe, whether as teachers or as graduate students.
Of course, there’s still so much to say about millennials.
Thankfully, Anne Helen Petersen of Buzzfeed News wrote something comprehensive about the depths of despair, I would prefer to call it, of the millennial generation.
Given how much passion I have for the work I do — and I know I am one of the few lucky ones — I never thought there will come a point when I would struggle with burnout. This prompted me to go back to therapy last month.
In my intake session, I was taken aback by something my psychologist said: “You know, Cherry, what you’re telling me right now isn’t entirely new. You’ve gone through the same thing years ago because, as I see it, your tendency is to go full throttle and all fired up. And then, you get exhausted. You burn out.” •
At least in my case, the connotation that young Capricorns would have the tendency to be serious — sometimes to the point of having a stern and cold disposition — is true. People often say their first impression of me is that I look “suplada”, then follow it up with, “pero kalog pala” after the next few encounters.
It has also been said that Capricorns, as they grow older, learn to loosen up and enjoy what others might think are childish things. I turned 26 last month, and, although I won’t consider myself that old yet, I can see the accuracy of this in my life.
In the previous years, in my pursuit of work-life balance and, consequently, a self-care routine, I’ve been learning to let go of the pressure to be perfect, to take as much time as I need to rest and regain composure, and to not rush things in accomplishing the enormous goals I had erected for myself. I am glad to have understood that self-love is also among those which the Little Prince would describe as a “matter of consequence”.
Still, when the world demands so much from you — no matter how well aware you are that you cannot pour from an empty cup — it’s difficult to prioritize the self.
This hit me right smack in the chest in the second week of January, my birthday week. For many months prior to then, I have been working almost non-stop, rendering about 20 hours at work per day, including the weekends and holidays. I thought exerting that much physical and mental effort was no big deal because I loved what I was doing, especially because I loved what I was doing. Then came the mornings when getting out of bed became a struggle; when the very things I used to enjoy, I deplored; and the job on which I take great pride, I repulsed.
It doesn’t take an expert to know I was burned out.
My birthday week coincided with the crunch time for a full-length historical documentary that we were producing. During those days, I wasn’t only emotionally drained but also physical ill-disposed. I got sick, finally. It was my overdue wake-up call.
Burnout seems to be a common term these days, and there’s sadly stigma surrounding its use. I was relieved to see my presently favorite vloggers, the Try Guys, make a video about it and narrate their experiences.
More recently, there seems to be a trend of workaholism and overworking with millennials — or people born between 1981 and 1996 — at the forefront.
Millennial. I first saw the term used in an article on TIME magazine back in 2010. At the time, at least from what I remember, it was used to describe the generation experiencing “exponential” technological advancements. Now, it’s almost like a blanket term for young adults, mostly professionals now, who are stereotyped as lazy, entitled, and spoiled.
I don’t find any of those terms demeaning. I believe some people my age are lazy, entitled, and spoiled. In fact, I myself am lazy, entitled, and spoiled more often than I would like to admit. However, it would be unfair and unjust to box everyone in our age group into those descriptors, as if we’re all one and the same. If anything, I think a general term that could possibly apply to everyone in my generation is this: misunderstood.
Millennials were coming of age when technology was being revolutionized: it was a time of transitioning from bulky desktop computers to portable laptops, from handy pagers to ubiquitous smartphones, from bulky encyclopedias to speedy search engines. The internet has begun to infiltrate people’s consciousness, and social media was starting to catch fire.
We grew up immersed in cyberspace — after all, we witnessed its birth and, perhaps, evolved with it — that we consider the internet to be a safe space. While parents were being difficult to reason with at home, we were free to rant and vent all we want online. In that abstract milieu of technology, a global village, as Marshall McLuhan theorized, blossomed where we find other people who feel the way we do. Amid the angst of puberty, adolescence, and adulthood — all painful passages in life one has to go through — we discover that we are not as isolated and misunderstood as we thought we were.
This was a shared sentiment among participants, mostly young adults, in an internal company meeting I attended sometime last year. After the formal discussions on media ethics, we had a lecturer-initiated, totally unrelated, informal talk about the millennial generation. Our middle-aged lecturers were concerned about how their children, who belong to the same age group as we do, seem to enjoy the company of their friends more than that of their family.
I reckon it’s not only the affinity but also the freedom of expression that we should take into account. Millennials were raised in the belief that education is the key to success. In effect, we learned to work our butts off in school, chasing grades of As, getting depressed over a few mistakes in examinations, and not being able to talk about feelings of failure to our parents. How could we when the weight upon our shoulders were from them?
By the time we get into the world of employment, millennials have become far too idealistic. After all, we didn’t graduate with honors just to land an ordinary job that pays a meager salary.
Our idealism is crushed by the realities of adulthood, of which we weren’t prepared in school. We always thought education is enough, that hard work pays off. In the end, I see many among us decide to return where our comforts lie: in the academe, whether as teachers or as graduate students.
Of course, there’s still so much to say about millennials.
Thankfully, Anne Helen Petersen of Buzzfeed News wrote something comprehensive about the depths of despair, I would prefer to call it, of the millennial generation.
Why can’t I get this mundane stuff done? Because I’m burned out. Why am I burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young. Life has always been hard, but many millennials are unequipped to deal with the particular ways in which it’s become hard for us.
Pundits spend a lot of time saying, “This is not normal,” but the only way for us to survive, day to day, is to normalize the events, the threats, the barrage of information, the costs, the expectations of us. Burnout isn’t a place to visit and come back from; it’s our permanent residence.
Given how much passion I have for the work I do — and I know I am one of the few lucky ones — I never thought there will come a point when I would struggle with burnout. This prompted me to go back to therapy last month.
In my intake session, I was taken aback by something my psychologist said: “You know, Cherry, what you’re telling me right now isn’t entirely new. You’ve gone through the same thing years ago because, as I see it, your tendency is to go full throttle and all fired up. And then, you get exhausted. You burn out.” •