Counting To Infinity

read: time for time off

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action …

And there isn’t a fourth thing in this old Cold War life in Moscow wisdom, but five hits in 72 hours is a sign that it’s time to rest.

Attention Conservation Notice:

I periodically duck when I detect symptoms of burnout. Today is one of those days.

Prior Events:

Back in late 2012 I did not understand what was happening to me. A wise old man said “If you don’t take months off now, recovering could take years.” I was not in a position to hear and it did indeed take a number of years before I felt even vaguely like I could get active again.

The big burnout indicator for me is inappropriate humor - laughing at tragedy is a clear sign I need to immediately go outside and just stay there for a while. Since I’m modeling “don’t do what I did in 2012”, I do write about this stuff. Here are some prior times

Sabbatical Indicated 18 Feb 2025

Vicarious Trauma 30 Dec 2024

Positive Self Care Results 23 Nov 2024

Time Out Corner 19 Sep 2024

Silent Lucidity 7 Jun 2024

Sounds Of Silence 14 May 2024

Retiring Signal & Taking Time Off 3 May 2024

Recognizing & Remediating Burnout 3 May 2024

Current:

I’ve been excited about the Sunday night Non State Actors Guild stream since we started, but an hour in last night I gritted my teeth for fifteen minutes, then hit eject. There are some things that simply should not be tolerated. I haven’t explained precisely why things are the way they are and I will not, but what happened is a firm nope from me. Life is just too short.

There have been four other things that I won’t describe in great detail, but basically 1) complex administrative thing I had to do failed hard 2) other complex admin thing will get done, but too late to save me a lot of grief this month 3) most promising business development thing has run aground 4) REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED …

No laughter this time, there’s nothing funny about it. Being rather stabby is my secondary indicator and I’m just in no mood for any of this.

Conclusion:

I think today I will walk (not bike) to Lime Ridge, and sit under a tree until my butt goes numb. If I had camping gear I’d tuck in somewhere and not come home until I ran out of food/water. That’s one of the frustrations of living here - getting from BART to anything cognizable as “outside” is a job in and of itself, let alone finding some out of the way place to just throw down a bivouac bag for the night.

Twenty years ago a friend and I threw down a tarp high above Emerald lake, had a go at Mount Elbert the next day, swam in the lake to get clean, then got back to Morrison in time to see Widespread Panic at Red Rocks. This shuffling across a suburban hellscape from one little climate controlled box to another is just … not good for any of us, but doubleplus not good for this country boy.