I am dissecting my burnout now

I'm off social media. I've shut down my Instagram temporarily. 

I started to feel invisible. Lost in the air, like I was just noise adding to more noise. Like I was pollution. 

It's sad to accept and come to terms with this realization. But I know I'm not alone. Because I think this is what happens when we are becoming reborn in some way. 

I've spent a lot of my time on Earth with depression. I've spent a lot of my time on Earth in my head. And trying as a daily practice to calm those woes, to calm the voices inside and that's what my daily practice has been. That's what my art has helped me achieve: feeling at one with the present moment, feeling purposeful, feeling like my art could be an extension of my personality where I didn't have to hide. 

But now in the social media landscape, I feel...lost. Because I don't want to be pressured into selling perfection. 

Because I think the striving for perfection is what makes people feel sick. And it leads to feelings of inadequacy and a constant planning for a future that we are all making up and trying to make sense of. 

I feel lost these days. I feel scared. 
I am scared of what is to become of me. 

I can feel myself writhing inside knowing that I don't want to amount to nothingness and yet I feel so stricken down, like I can't rise to my purpose these days. And I am absolutely terrified to write all this and know that this exists in a public space where someone will read my thoughts - but I know that I have to get it out of me, and I know that I am not alone. And I know that hiding is a side effect of perfection, and I don't want to spend my days hiding anymore than I need to. 

I am trying to recalibrate my moral compass these days. I am trying to believe in the world again. I am trying to see color and vibrancy and guttural laughter. I am trying to remember and believe that I am plenty -- I don't want to just be enough -- I want to be brimming over with gratitude and spaciousness and love and joy. 

I am trying to like myself in a way that isn't fleeting. 

I am trying to write an anti-self-help book. Where I can let it flood - my memories and how they affect me in my present moment. I am dissecting my burn out right now. 

And in my quest to feel purposeful, what I have learned is that: other people make me feel purposeful and I feel so grateful that people haven't given up on me and that I am still invited to share my efforts, my point of view, and my work. Because it's those moment when someone else turns the lights on in the room, that I can open my mouth again to speak and trust the words coming out of me. 

So this is where I will turn to on those days and nights that I can't find the light switch -- I'll turn it on here. I'll remember who I am. Here.