Girlrotting

I think a lot about rot and rotting because the rot is something that's featured prominently in my life in recent years. In my mind, the rot is something that creeps up on you when you aren't doing enough to take care of yourself. The rot may creep up on you even if you are taking care of yourself, if you aren't doing enough to take care of others. After all, we all live in one world, and when the rot comes for others it will inevitably come for you too. The rot has both an individual and social aspect.

The rot—at least, the kind I'm concerned with—probably won't kill you, but there's good reason to hang on to its association with death. The rot will leave you feeling miserable. It'll make everything in your life harder to deal with. Overcoming a little bit of the rot isn't too hard, but the more you rot, the harder it gets to deal with it. A healthy life is one in which you are continuously doing a little bit of work to keep the rot at bay.

This is the first year I've felt totally and utterly burnt out, or at least, the first year I've been willing to admit it to myself. I've still over-extended myself, but I'm finding the consequences more dire than they used to be. I'm finding that recovery takes longer, and that it's less comfortable. One of the things that makes burn out so insufferable to someone like me is that there isn't really a "thing" you can do to deal with it. The only good advice, frustratingly, is to do less. But how can I do less when there's still so much to do?

Right before the beginning of the summer, I got two weeks off work. I think this was the first time I've taken a real vacation in many years. Despite having nothing to do, I found that I was still constantly doing some kind of work. I live my life in stints standing in the kitchen, cooking breakfast, cooking lunch, cooking dinner, cleaning the dishes. Or at least, that's how it feels, sometimes. Everything else sort of slurs together. Time collapses on a point.

If the rest doesn't feel "real," it can be hard to convince yourself you're in the process of recovery.

The thing I find most frustrating about the traditional advice for burnout is that it seems to be missing something. The "minimum viable life," the life lived with the most rest you can afford, with the rot kept at bay, isn't necessarily all that easy on its own. There is a minimum amount of non-resting you need to do every day just in order to stay alive. You need to cook, and you need to clean. If you don't clean, then you can't cook. If you don't cook, then you can't do much of anything. That, or you could pay the disability tax and order food off the internet every night, in all likelihood leaving you feeling much worse. And that's assuming you aren't liable to do care work as well. That assumes you don't also have to do a ton of paperwork lest the government deport you or your loved ones. That assumes you don't have to mow the lawn seven times a month lest your landlord puts you on the streets.

It always feels so embarrassing trying to talk about this "minimum viable life," because this is just the nature of being an adult in our world-historic social context. But I know it shouldn't. I know I'm not alone in this. I hope that one day I'll find rest without the rot, but for now, I'm still looking.

And on that note, I should probably go do the dishes.

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