TOP FIVE WAYS TO BUILD SUCCESS WITHOUT BURNING OUT! TESTED AND APPROVED BY EXPERTS!!!

Just kidding. I don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing.

Lately I’ve been struggling with a lot of mini-dilemmas – everyday decisions that may have some kind of moral or ethical quandary to overcome. This got me thinking of the cost associated with always trying to do the right thing, and not fall victim to giving up or burnout. The truth is, I’ve not been successful at determining how to mitigate that. I generally choose wine and Ted Lasso.

Unfortunately, for me, I was raised Catholic, half German, and am a highly-likely, long-suspected, undiagnosed ADHD female slowly entering her next phase of life (something I recently saw referred to as Cougar Puberty, and I’m still trying to decide how I feel about this – because I do feel good about myself when I manage to ward off human interaction by looking like an illusive creature who is both deadly and hungry). It’s the quad-fecta of guilt and shame. Add on people pleasing while making myself small with a mound of self deprecation and BAM! You get this fine specimen:

Notice how this creature has put her robe on inside-out for maximum comfort.

The fact that I struggle with certain basic tasks is probably more complicated than just ADHD, perimenopause (assuming I’ve reached this stage), or societal fatigue, alone, but I have often wondered if we created this mess through modernity. Our attempt to promote efficiency and production inadvertently made things worse.

Is this because our lives have grown so complex and max’ed out that we don’t have the time or patience to handle the things that should matter?

Do we even believe these things truly matter anymore?

Have our morals and ethics for an ideal society just grown so meaningless that even the most well-intentioned people struggle to feel success in the small, but important spaces of our shared and beautiful planet?

Perhaps our societies have simply grown too large that we can no longer even fathom how our simple efforts might make big change?

Or is the problem that we even expect big change at all?! Have we corrupted our thinking with so much vanity and narcissism, always hoping for a profound effect, that we don’t even find value in the minutia of our lives?

I don’t have the answers. Remember…inside-out robe lady. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I have the best system in place to overcome the stress and burnout caused by these little conundrums. I like to see how others are making bigger strides in areas where I’m less successful, so I ask my friends and family how they tackle certain issues. Sometimes I learn a new strategy, but mostly I learn that they aren’t perfect either and it’s always great to commiserate just a little.

In the end, the energy cost for ‘doing the right thing’ for me varies. Sometimes I GAIN energy from doing something virtuous because it is an idea I feel incredibly excited about, running on inspiration and dopamine (until that fizzles out and I have a half-finished project sitting in my house). Other times I am driven by guilt or shame and sometimes I just flat out fail. It’s in the routine activities where I feel the greatest cost. I maintain and persevere myself straight into boredom and burnout. Without factoring the losses due to “what might have been” had I followed through, the biggest impact is how it affects my relationships – how I, in turn, might lash out and blame my family for not helping or having the same moral high ground as me. I mean, do they want the bees and the polar bears to die?!

Maybe next week I will live my entire week attempting all of the things I wish I did more often, abandoning the activities I generally fall back on (sorry, Ted. You and that cab sauv will have to wait) and see how well I do or how it makes me feel…stay tuned.

Now, for your entertainment, here is some dumb shit my neurotic brain stresses about. Maybe you will feel a little better about yourself….

Quandary number one: I am proud of the biodiversity in my backyard, everything from the fungi to the birds and mammals that frolic about, finding food, bathing, and sometimes just playing; but, I really dislike the squatters that want to infiltrate my home (sometimes at a financial burden) and I certainly don’t appreciate the insects biting and dive-bombing me like some WWII Axis fleet (I mean, JESUS, first it was stink bugs, now lantern flies, and always and forever the mosquitoes who are trying to give me west nile and EEE).

I’ve avoided the use of pesticides and poisons around my home, but where is the line when I need them to stay outside?! If I kill something, no matter how small, it feels like murder. I know most of you will think I’m going overboard, but I honestly don’t know when or how we decided which lives had value and which did not. I suppose, in our human world, those without an ability to speak for themselves or stand up and fight are okay to kill? This sounds fairly familiar in our current American Society…so that must be it.

Quandary number two: I aspire to properly separate my trash, including all things compostable. I have TWO indoor containers to make this possible, plus an outdoor composting bin AND a green bin from the county for all kitchen and yard waste (no animal products, but I don’t think the insects that infiltrate the green bin respect our petty, human rules); yet, the amount of times I will fill up the indoor compost bin just to set it outside of the door with good intentions to dump it, but instead let it turn into a smelly slurry, is obscene and bordering on problematic.

Every time I choose to then throw the food waste into the regular trash I imagine all of the compostable waste in the land fill, along with tonnes of other rubbish. Buried deep beneath bits of metal and copious plastic bags, packaging, and unwanted items, the biodegradables live a sad ending, purposeless and in agony – like a state-run hospice and care center, bleak and forgotten – while a stretch of land that sits adjacent to the landfill is depleted and weeping, as the food it was promised was discarded to a literal wasteland. This is a bit dramatic, and I get that, but this is the world of landfills that we created, as humans, and it is an image that generally motivates me to not be such a lazy shit and just take 30 extra seconds to dispose of it properly. But then Ted…. I’ll do it later.