On burnout

We have to keep going.

No matter what happens, come hell or high water, we have to keep going. Time moves in only one direction. We look back to see how far we’ve come, one foot and then the other, we fall and get up, and we keep going because we must. We worry, maybe just for a moment, because we don’t know how long we can keep up the pace, but we do it anyway, because we have to keep going.

Until one moment, we can’t go on anymore.

The last time I wasn’t okay — in fact, I was quite unwell. Or, as I poorly managed to articulate: “I am not feeling well. Sorry. I’m finding it very hard to function.”

I am well aware that these words are open to many interpretations and that “functioning,” in the case of biological survival machines like myself — and very likely you — isn’t always precise. But I choose that word deliberately, because I truly couldn’t do anything, starting with speaking.

It’s perfectly understandable why system metaphors are so utterly irresistible to cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Although nothing in the brain works in the discrete and orderly way we describe it, these images seem especially useful for grasping the scale of what happens in our heavy skulls.

“This is where things related to language happen,” we hear and nod. “And here, everything related to what we see or imagine; over there, bodily movements; here, what we hear; and further in is that part which, when damaged, makes you shout everything you’re thinking to everyone.”…