[robby1066]

I went through a bit of a roller-coaster reading this thread.

First I want to say, good for this guy! He noticed himself getting into a bad place and made a change. A change that he seems psyched about. That's legitimately great.

But as I was reading it, I couldn't help thinking "That's not burnout. WTF is this guy talking about???". Taking a few deep breaths, the rational take is more like "Wow, burnout hits everyone differently. This guy's experience seems WAY different than mine."

When I hit my breaking point, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't THINK about doing anything. I was so burned out that even the thought of starting something new sent me into panic attacks. There was no optimistic story I could tell myself (or anyone else) about the future.

To me, burnout felt like there was a gear in my head that's supposed to turn at 100 rpms and it had gotten sped up to a million rmps, and it was stuck that way. And it was throwing off sparks and teetering and threatening to fly loose at any moment. When I finally left my job, it took a solid 6 months of doing nothing for that gear to START feeling like it was slowing down to normal speed. It was the worst.