Now № 5

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Burnout snuck up on me. A year of no real vacations, increasing responsibilities at work and the background anxiety of everything hit me all at once.

I’m on vacation in Sharm El-Sheikh, Sinai. The first few days of being disconnected were exhausting. I caught up on sleep and let go of more than a year of stress. Sunshine, warmth and swimming around the coral reefs are exactly what I needed.

So that’s what I’m doing now — trying to get back on track mentally after a year of distraction and anxiety. It shows physically: I’m carrying an extra 10 kg with me and am in noticeably worse shape than a year ago. The mental signs are more subtle, but still there: constant background anxiety, being quicker to anger and losing hours to mindless surfing the web.

This too shall pass.

Now that spring’s finally come to Kyiv, it’s time to get back to running and biking. Corona hysteria is waning, time to get back to real life again. The virtual dystopia of Zoom meetings and meeting every basic need through apps is ending.

I’m also going through some good books that I’ll have more to write about as they sink in:

My main practice is still rooted in Buddhism, but it’s fascinating to read about similar approaches in Western thought. Much of my experience with Christianity and Western spiritual traditions is almost a caricature in the vein of the new atheists. There’s a lot more to these traditions, and this is just a start to what I’d like to put more effort into studying.