May 6, 2025

Look 114: Pouring light into ashes

Fellow angler,

Remember two weeks ago when I said I was tired? I’ve been fighting through burnout for weeks. And by weeks I mean 1-2 months.

It’s been a SLOG. I felt physically and mentally drained all the time. But I wanted to keep truckin’ through. Keep doing all my tasks (why are there so many tasks in life?) and keep some semblance of normalcy: working enough each day to avoid upsetting the big boss man, exercising 2-3 times per week, walking 8k daily steps, writing mediocre blogs, reading the blogs of better writers.

I knew I was dealing with burnout so I decided to be smart. I would do what was necessary to maintain my routines and I’d temporarily cut everything else.

The issue was that everything I wanted to do ended up feeling necessary. For every one thing I considered cutting, there was the other one (or three) that I simply couldn’t bring myself to stop: rebuilding my habit of morning meditations, going into the office 3x weekly (I’m not required to go in at all), reading while on the train, de-googling, keeping an active Reddit streak, and so much else.

The previous week had also been the Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl, which was fun but required spending my free time visiting as many bookstores as I could. (See a write-up of my crawl here.)

Like that old folk song says, I was going down the road feeling bad.

Aside: Today’s post is more of a personal essay than what I’d normally write. That wasn’t my plan when I sat down but in the end, maybe I still make a useful point about the writing life? Probably not. But feel free to find something helpful in this mess.

Here comes sunshine

Last week I turned the corner. It started with a little hell in a bucket — a couple of long work days where I had to be “on” much more than usual. I had to look good for some big wigs in town, plus hours of meetings and extracurriculars.

And that was all Monday! I’m a firm believer that I shouldn’t be expected to do real work on Mondays. If you’re forcing me to go into an office on a Monday, then at least give me the courtesy of a meeting-free day so my body can get reacquainted with having a job.

After a long day, I decided it really was time for a break. I would skip workouts, accept not writing, forget how to read, and not do anything unnecessary unless it was focused on recovery. I called in sick Thursday and went to Times Square to cheer on my wife, who was singin’ and dancin’ in the street as part of a show.

I still answered work messages that day, but taking the sick day allowed me to accept that I could stop pretending I was doing serious work all day.

I also told my wife that I was burned out and asked her to do some things that I didn’t have the capacity to think about anymore. She knew I was burned out and had already stepped up to help, but the act of saying it out loud and acknowledging that I needed even more help felt like Atlas putting down the heavens for a little while to stretch his shoulders. All those pop psych articles are right, labeling your emotions is liberating.

By Saturday I figured I was on the mend. I had a ticket for a two-hour trolley tour at Green-Wood Cemetery. It was about Revolutionary War figures and led by GW’s historian. He doesn’t do as many tours as he used to so I try to do his tours whenever possible. This man’s knowledge and jokes are at a level I can only dream to reach within my lifetime. (And he keeps up to date. A couple of weeks ago he had a great joke about launching Katy Perry into space.)

Anyway, the fates conspired against me and I missed that tour. I left my apartment 45 minutes before it started. The train ride is only 20 minutes. But it turned out service was reduced that weekend. Once I finally got on a train, weekend repairs meant the train traveled very slowly and skipped the cemetery stop.

I considered prying open the door and ejecting myself onto the platform like Evel Knievel. Instead, I had to speed walk from a nearby station. I even jogged a little. That’s noteworthy because I have a strict no-jogging policy. If I can’t catch a train or make it to an event by walking, then I’m not going to make it. This tour felt enough to break the rules. I needed to hear that old man deliver clever one-liners about long-dead people.

Well, I jogged up to the cemetery and as I was about to pass through the gate, I saw the trolley drive off. It was like that Spongebob scene where Squidward realizes he wasted his day off and his head deflates.

My last hope was that the trolley went to one Revolutionary War site I knew. If I walked up there I could catch up to it and join late. So I raced (but walked) up another hill. Not trolley.

So I deposited my weary body on a bench and stared at a caterpillar on a thread for an indeterminate amount of time. My calves burned from 15+ minutes of uphill speed walking and now that I’d stopped moving, the sweat was pouring out of me. That’s too much for 10am.

Normally I’d walk around Green-Wood on a Saturday anyway. I mostly use Saturdays to walk, make phone calls, and decompress after the work week. But I felt defeated by this trip to Green-Wood. I’d even removed my maps and binoculars from my bag, thinking I didn’t need the extra weight during the tour. Walking around now would feel aimless and like salt in a wound.

I dragged my body to a nearby coffee show to eat some grits and drink a coffee. It was both too much food and too much coffee. I planned to walk a little to digest and get myself home to vegetate.

ALAS the fates had one more turn planned for me.

On the road again

I started walking home and the more I walked, the better I felt. So I kept walking. After 20 minutes I decided to walk to a pigeon-themed bookstore that was far away and that I’d only been to because of the Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl.

After buying too much pigeon merch and The Unworthy, the most recently translated novel by Agustina Bazterrica (great author, would recommend Tender Is the Flesh) I decided to walk through Prospect Park. I stopped by a lake to admire wood ducks, perused a farmers market, and phoned family. I felt great!

I ended the day having re-energized myself. Along the way, I walked over 34,000 steps and 15 miles. For anyone keeping track, that is a personal best.

I don’t know exactly what it was about the long walk that helped me snap out of my malaise. It reminds me of Hyperbole and a Half (very funny book) where Allie Brosh is battling depression and a random event — seeing a grape under the fridge — makes something click such that she starts to feel like herself again.

Life works in mysterious ways I suppose. And since those mysteries too often end unfavorably, I won’t question this positive change too deeply.

Title song

This entire post has been brought to you by The Grateful Dead.

I was able to shoehorn in 9 song titles from the Dead’s vast catalog.¹ It wasn’t always the most graceful. Most of you thought it was the latest example of my poor writing. But if you did catch on to what I was doing, comment or respond to this email. I won’t believe you but I will respect your commitment to the lie and give you some sort of recognition.

The title for this post is from Dark Star. Burnout had me feeling like a dark star that just sucks in light and energy. The song starts, “Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes.”

Most of the lyrics in this song are nonsense (some of the nonsense is inspired by T.S. Eliot). This is a classic Grateful Dead not because of its words, but because the band used it in live shows as a vehicle for their legendary jams. Some versions don’t even have the lyrics.

Included below is a 23-minute Dark Star performed at the Fillmore West in 1969. It’s not strictly my favorite version but on the off chance any of you actually listens to it, this is one of the most accessible versions.

Until next time,

Happy fishing!