This really isn’t the short term burning out at all, either. This isn’t the “I’m sick of things, let me disappear for a day” thing. This is the honest to god, deep soul-core burnout that comes with running on too many cylinders for too long. The symptoms were all there: My day-long constitutationals were turning into weekly occurrences, my motivation to do anything has been flagging, my imagination hasn’t been sparked, and obligations have been dropping left and right because I simply don’t care anymore. I can’t even motivate myself to go out dancing anymore- last night was driven by a sense of obligation to my friends rather than any legitimate desire to go out.

Hell, I don’t even know where to begin, which is a pretty good indication of my state of mind recently. To give a lead in, this weekend is a perfect example. I left work yesterday, took a quick shower, then went to a salsa lesson, after which I went home to clean the apartment. This morning I woke up, did some more cleaning, did a lot of way overdue dishes, went to school and finished my datamining homework, came home, got gussied up and head out to an MBA-student semi-formal casino night where I rubbed elbows with a lot of people. After that I ditched the jacket and tie to head to Swing City for a bit, and now I’m home using precious sleep time to toss out this post. Tomorrow I’m shopping/cooking in the morning, will hopefully make it to the gym before I go to the Cotton Club dance lesson (we’re doing advanced hustle), after which I need to grab a bite before I head to my weekly Salsa night at Havana. Then monday to work, then to class, then home, etc etc etc ad nauseum.

There’s an inherent conflict in my mind, part of me that keeps pulling back from my ‘can do’ attitude and the ‘go getter’ productivity whore that I turn into on occasion. It’s the conflict between A and B, the thought versus the action. It’s all well and good to be able to produce, but part of me becomes frustrated at the complete lack of perspective I sometimes have.

The complete lack of free time is getting to me, and it’s not letting up. In two weeks I have deliverables- one take home midterm, one exam, one paper rough draft, one freelance project, all due the same weekend. I have friends coming through next weekend to crash, and I promised them Adventures in Cooking. Work’s big deadline tomorrow had me at work all day today (going home now). Somewhere I have to do laundry, read 5 chapters of Human Resources (I think I’ve discovered an aspect of business that I have to force myself to care about), and find 40 hours of freelancing time.

Finals week is over… sort of. I still have 8 pages to write before I can relax, but that shouldn’t take me past noon. After that, I have a volunteer coding project with a really hard deadline, but no-one on the project is going to care if I destress a bit after putting the site structure white paper together. So what’s on for tonight? Good question.