Breakfast Club: Dec. 12, 2021

breakfast club
weekly running roundups 

Endless hallways at Naval Air Station Alameda.

“I'm so done.”

It’s a sentiment in the air of late: “I'm over it,” “I'm done,” “Nope, no more; I can't.”

It’s the collective groan of burnout. And I've heard it from friends, in Slack messages, in 1:1s with direct reports, and chatting on runs. Folks have had it with... all of this. They’re overcooked, indeed thrice cooked over, and they’re just done.

Some of this is the usual end-of-year fatigue. The holidays are here and we need a break from the workday grind. But mass expression of capitulation is also a reaction to the pandemic entering yet another phase of intensified spread.

Being “done” might mean refusing to re-adopt protective routines, an end to caring about the virus, but mostly it’s an expression of exhaustion, despair after twenty months of diminished life in the face of the pandemic.