Un-burning - Part One

Burn-out is usually defined as a Capitalist malady: it’s the inability to be happily productive, because you can’t handle the stress of your under-resourced job in your dysfunctional workplace. Since The Organisation is not going to change, you must.

Yeah, well, screw that. The Mayo Clinic suggests:

Discuss specific concerns with your supervisor. Maybe you can work together to change expectations or reach compromises or solutions. Try to set goals for what must get done and what can wait.

Seek support. Whether you reach out to co-workers, friends or loved ones, support and collaboration might help you cope. If you have access to an employee assistance program, take advantage of relevant services.

Try a relaxing activity. Explore programs that can help with stress such as yoga, meditation or tai chi.

Get some exercise. Regular physical activity can help you to better deal with stress. It can also take your mind off work.

Get some sleep. Sleep restores well-being and helps protect your health.

Mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of focusing on your breath flow and being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling at every moment, without interpretation or judgment. In a job setting, this practice involves facing situations with openness and patience, and without judgment.

If you could do the first two of those, the chances are you would not be feeling burned out. One reason burnout happens is exactly because we can’t trust or find support from our “colleagues”.

Yoga, meditation and tai chi are not support mechanisms for improved post-modern Capitalist productivity. Anyone doing any of those seriously would become more aware of, and less inclined to accept, the BS that is making them feel burned-out.

Exercise. Sure. I do that already. One’s motivation to hit the gym tends to slacken when one is feeling stressed.

Sleep. I do that just fine. Telling someone who is stressed-out to sleep more is like telling someone who is living near a main road to enjoy silence.

And anyone who suggests or sells “mindfulness” is not your friend. “Mindful” in English means “Watch what you are saying and doing, you are not among friends”. Seriously. That’s what it means. “Mindfulness” is sold as a "spiritual practice”, but it is in fact a warning to self-censor your reactions and feelings - which is what "facing situations with openness and patience, and without judgment” means.

So that was useful.

What does a practical man of action do?

We admitted we were burned out, that our lives had become unmanageable. (Where have I heard that before?)

I had two thirty-minute Thai massages a week for a couple of weeks. The ones where she holds on to the bar on the ceiling to balance and walks on me.

I got back into the gym: Saturday and Sunday mornings, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. At this stage, simply showing up and hefting any amount of iron will do.

I have one Americano in the morning, with breakfast, and espresso after that. No tea, unless it’s the afternoon and I’m at home. Something about hot water and milk wasn’t helping.

I’m parking the car at the station in the morning. At twenty-five past six there are spaces. Pay by the Ringo App. It’s half the price of parking at Richmond. I feel so much more relaxed at both ends of the day. I kinda knew I resented that walk from the station to where I’ve been parking the car, but I didn’t know how much I resented it.

Yep. It’s pollen time again. Back comes the Beconase. When my eyes start itching, I take a couple of snorts.

I’m easing back my negative self-talk. No more “what’s wrong with me / I’m too old for this / I can’t keep this pace up” and the like. This is the first thing that Mike Cernovich talks about in Gorilla Mindset. I thought I had that one down when I read it.

“Be nice to yourself” I say every now and then.

Since the Doddle at Liverpool Street closed, I haven’t had anywhere convenient to get Amazon deliveries. Then I noticed my local Homebase has an Amazon locker. I experimented with a delivery: the locker broke down for a day, but Amazon sent me a mail when it started working, and I collected the book I’d ordered. I will be using that again. A lack of Amazon delivery turned out to be a little thing that itched.

At work, I recognised that SQL-cutting is monotonous and requires focus. So I’m slowing down a little. I’m taking the pressure off me to cut fast and cut once, because that always works well. I should have learned by now, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.

I move around the office a bit, so I’m not sitting at the same place all day.

I make sure I do something for me during working hours. I’m not the only one at work who gets to the end of the day and realises they haven’t done X, where X is “collect the dry cleaning” or “make a reservation” or “collect the prescription”.

Staircases and Highwalks - London Wall

Last year I was Mr Highwalks. Then I got tired of them, and now walk along the pavements along with the ordinary people. Every now and then, I have to have some fresh air and sunshine, because the office is dull and the aircon is, wait, we have aircon? Anyway, this fell in front of my lens, so here it is.

The X-Bow, Amsterdam

This is the Polarcus Nadia, an oceanographic ship currently laid up at Amsterdam. That weird bow - roughly the reverse of the shape the bow "should" be - is called an Ulstein X-Bow. It's supposed to make the vessel much more stable, stop it hammering up and down in heavier seas, and thus let the crew get more rest. I thought it was an icebreaker at first, but what the frak do I know about ships?

What A Suburban Railway Station Should Look LIke

This is what a suburban railway station should look like. Notice that the track and the trackside are clear of weeds. Nor has it any litter. The surfaces are clean. There are no tacky advertisements - though there are a couple of small covered billboards by the entrance.

It's in the Netherlands, outside Utrecht. It belongs to the Dutch national railway company.

Why can't UK railway companies keep their tracks clean and weed-free?

No profit in cleanliness. And no pride to do it just because.

St Pauls From Watling Street

Watling Street is a narrow alley between St Paul's and Bank. I go there for cooked meaty goodness from Porterford Butchers where at lunchtime there is always a queue of other men also wanting cooked meaty goodness for £5 a shot. Stand in the line and look up and directly in front, and this is the view. St Pauls dominates your visual field. From other angles it's big, or noticeable and dome-y, but from Watling Street it dominates. This was the first time I really got a sense of how BIG it is.

Why Jo Ellison Is Wrong About Why I Wear Noise-Cancelling Headphones

I went in to the gym Saturday morning and picked up a complementary copy of the FT. I read it Sunday. This bit of improvised twaddle from Jo Ellison caught my attention...

While the presentational parent [reading loudly to her child on the train] assumes herself to be worthy of an audience, to shut out the world around you assumes a different kind of arrogance - the kind that suggests nothing worthy of attention. The noisy adult on the train is a violation of one kind of social contract, the one in which we consider out impact on other people’s lives. But the widespread use of [noise-cancelling] headphones symbolises another social ill. The death of the community - where you are attuned to the nuances of life around you and moderate your behaviour to fit in.

Noise-cancelling headphones are worn by commuters and people who work in open-plan offices. Why offices? A fully-loaded commuter train is quieter (around 40-50 dB) than an open-plan office (around 55 - 65 db when it fills up). I have a noise meter on my iPhone, so I know. Regular commuters know not to talk during the journey. The newbies who do talk, bursting with excitement at what may be their annual early morning trip to the Big City, are regarded as public nuisances, whom we hope will get out at Clapham Junction and take their wittering nonsense with them. I wear noise-cancelling headphones because I prefer the sound of my music to the sound of even a quiet train.

I can’t work with 65dB of multiple conference calls and miscellaneous chatter. Especially when it has nothing to do with anything I’m working on.

In a modern open-plan office, each of us works on our own tasks, related at best by being two different parts of a “process” which nobody can help us with, because we are all specialists.

There are no relevant nuances of life around us.

It’s not that I am arrogantly assuming that there is nothing worthy of my attention: there is actually nothing going on around me that needs my attention.

Everything comes in by e-mail or whichever IM service we’re using this year. That is how the modern workplace is designed.

And on some days, I may be entirely surrounded by day trippers from foreign lands like “Marketing” who chatter away until they disappear into a meeting, and then re-appear to chatter some more before packing up their roller-cases and departing for the 16:25 from Euston. Or wherever.

My noise-cancellers are a valuable productivity tool at work, and a means of keeping me from dozing off and missing my stop on the train.

And for the ten thousandth time… Just how disconnected from the real world can you get than to think that a commuter train, over- or under-ground, is any kind of freaking “community”? Or a Starbucks? Or any other public place where people go in the expectation of privacy from the strangers at the next stool at the counter? If a man in a cafe talked to Ms Ellison, she would Tweet a #MeToo in an instant. These are not “communities”. There are no freaking “communities” except in the rhetoric of social workers and architects.

Ms Ellison concludes by saying: for all the shouting, no-one’s listening anymore

They never were, Ms Ellison. They never were.

Burnout - June 2019

I ran across this video from Tony and Chelsea Northrup. It’s interesting if you want to hear two professional photographers talking about the frustrations and stresses of photography as a trade, even if you are not interested in what they have to say about burnout.

There are three things which, if I stop doing them for over a couple of weeks, feel like a warning: watching movies or a good box set; reading novels or textbooks; taking photographs.

The months I take photographs, even if just with the phone, are generally better than the months I don’t. If I’m taking photographs, it means I’m looking at the world around me and thinking that it’s worth recording. I do a lot of my reading on the train, so if I’m not reading, it’s because I’m dozing, hit by hay fever, can’t focus or preoccupied by nothing much. As for movies, those are the way I escape and relax - and I can relax to a Wim Wenders movie. So if I’m not watching movies a couple of times a week, I’m not resting properly. Sometimes I go through a couple of weeks when I don’t want other people’s stories in my head, and I never know what triggers that.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any of those things, and an age since I’ve taken any photographs. Well, Tony and Chelsea started talking about how they felt and I identified immediately. So I looked into the idea I might be burned out, or at least a little over-fried. One acronym is PAINT:

Pain – Multiple recurring physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, muscle ache
Anger – Feeling angry and irritable
Indifferent – Loss of motivation, drive, and interest
Negative – Feeling pessimistic, cynical
Tired – Physical and emotional fatigue

Pain. All damn June I’ve had lower back pain, I’ve been burping to the point of embarrassment, and I had to visit my Osteo to sort out a neck problem caused by doing face pulls incorrectly. Thanks to Athlean-X, I now do face-pulls correctly.

Anger. I can pass on that.

Indifference: that’s what I’ve been talking about. I’ve lost interest in stuff. I’m going through the motions.

Negative: what me? Cynical? How could you?

Tired: damn right. I can hardly stay awake after lunch.

The Mayo Clinic list these possible causes: Lack of control. An inability to influence decisions that affect your job — such as your schedule, assignments or workload — could lead to job burnout. So could a lack of the resources you need to do your work.

Unclear job expectations. If you're unclear about the degree of authority you have or what your supervisor or others expect from you, you're not likely to feel comfortable at work.

Dysfunctional workplace dynamics. Perhaps you work with an office bully, or you feel undermined by colleagues or your boss micromanages your work. This can contribute to job stress.

Extremes of activity. When a job is monotonous or chaotic, you need constant energy to remain focused — which can lead to fatigue and job burnout.

Lack of social support. If you feel isolated at work and in your personal life, you might feel more stressed.

Work-life imbalance. If your work takes up so much of your time and effort that you don't have the energy to spend time with your family and friends, you might burn out quickly.

Lack of control and unclear expectations - not really. Lack of resources? I work in retail banking, of course I don’t have really good tools to do my job. Of course my laptop takes ten minutes to get started. Of course we still use IE11 and they don’t even run ad-blockers. Of course the internet security blocks the user forum for the database software we use. Yeah, actually, now you ask...

Dysfunctional workplace dynamics - how long have I been going on about not liking the “new” office? It’s dark, no-one talks to each other, only half of us are in on any given day, and most of the time most people are on conference calls, which means they may as well not be there. You will never see two people working together on the same problem: everyone works alone and passes on the results to someone else.

Extremes of activity - so there is a sense in which my job is monotonous. I cut and run SQL all day in response to people’s needs for bits and pieces of data. To get the pace required, and to get the results as right as anyone ever can, takes a lot of focus. Inside my head, it’s a lot of hard work, but outside, I’m tapping-the-keyboard guy. At the same chair at the same desk with the same view all day every day. Monotony.

Lack of social support. Oh yeah. I am the only person in the team who does my job. I have no-one to talk to about it. There are a couple of people I can have a conversation with, maybe once a week, given our schedules. Outside work, all my friends moved away a long time ago. And as for *cough* intimate association *cough* - yeah, well, that ship sailed a long time ago.

Work-life balance. Easy. I have no life. Work takes all my energy. How many times have I gone on about my ridiculous sleep-wake schedule?

Yep. I reckon I qualify.

Next post or so I’m going to talk about what I might / can/ could do about it.