A two-week break. More or less, anyway. It’s difficult to take a break when you have to justify to yourself, your harshest critic, why you’re taking so much time away from work when you’re already just a small step away from financial precarity. Hard to justify rest at a time in your life when little is certain and there are always things to do. I remarked to my therapist, as I was entering my second day of this unplanned break and realizing that I needed more than just a couple “normal” work weeks would provide, that part of the reason I hesitated to do anything like this is because the problem at the core of my exhaustion is burnout. I’ve given everything I had and more to keep going on now there’s nothing left but enough of a spark to sputter along enough to keep myself financially solvent and alive. Little remains beyond what I can scrape together on a day-to-day basis. Nice as this two weeks of rest have been, they can’t solve that problem. Typically, this kind of burnout requires multiple months of rest, which requires a degree of financial stability I’m not sure I will ever have at this rate. That I won’t have for another few years at the earliest. It is better than nothing. It will help me get through the next couple months at least. I hope. I don’t know how long it will last, actually, since a rough week at work could burn through everything I’ve recovered.