Poetry

My Year in Haiku: 2025

Chris Leave a comment

2025 was the year I burned out. Utterly and completely in ways I might never recover from, given my inability to take the kind of rest I’d need to begin the process, much less complete it. It was also the year I made the most friends I’ve made in years, the year I connected to a new sense of community–something I’ve been withering away for the want of for a long time–and the year I finally admitted to myself, if no one else other than my therapist, that I had crossed a line somewhere and wasn’t sure I could find my way back. It was a bad year for a lot of reasons personal, professional, emotional, economically, politically, and so many more I haven’t the energy to summon to mind, let alone write out. I also found something I’m good at and am getting recognized for, and truly learned the lesson that no amount of positive input is going to make up for how burned out I was and still am. I can’t work through burnout. I can’t reprioritize around it. I can’t realign myself (specifically) to minimize it. And all I’ve got to show for working myself to that point is the knowledge that the instant I let up on the pressure I’m applied to myself, all of my coworkers started complaining to my boss about how little work it seemed like I was doing. Work that wasn’t my job, that they had taken for granted I would continue doing once the project was done, but work that someone needed to be doing and they decided it had to be me since I’d stepped up when that work not getting done would have burned me worst of all. It was not worth it. None of it was. And yet there’s nothing I can do about it now other than try to find some path forward that will limit any further damage. Which, you know, isn’t fixing anything. It just hopefully avoids making it worse.

(1/1)
Hope begets loss and
I cannot stand any more.
This is survival.

(1/8)
It is easier
To look away than confront
What is on my mind.

(1/14)
I change my alarm
To reflect reality…
Should I change myself?

(1/21)
Balancing my needs
Against my protective urges
Has left me frozen.

(1/26)
I wake up and go
From bed to office to bed
As a day passes.

(1/30)
Yesterday cost more
Than I was willing to pay.
What else could I do?

(1/31)
I’m losing my shit.
This dumb shit keeps happening
And I’m losing it.

(2/1)
I’ve avoided this
For my entire adult life.
Please pardon my grief.

(2/6)
Weariness claws at
My empty, echoing mind
As I look for rest.

(2/11)
I can feel my soul
Dragging through the muck and mire
Of this too-long year.

(2/20)
I still waste mornings
When my days are not dreary.
Change is not instant.

(2/23)
I feel myself yearn
For the same satisfaction
I get from this game.

(2/24)
I’m burnt to a crisp
And it gets worse every day.
I might never heal.

(2/27)
A new chance to rest
Is spoiled by people needing
Me to be present.

(2/28)
A slow start today,
But avalanches start with
a single motion.

(3/1)
My recovery
Is held captive by burnout.
Can I ever heal?

(3/4)
Burnout bringing me
To the edge of a breakdown
I cannot afford.

(3/10)
What’s left of me wears
Down to a nub while I work
One just one more step.

(3/12)
A moment of breath
Amidst the ceaseless effort.
I must carry on.

(3/19)
Another aching
Day spent trying to get rest
So I can work more.

(3/24)
Another week starts
As I struggle to get out
Of sheer exhaustion.

(3/30)
My final structure
Looms large in my afternoon.
It should be fun, though.

(4/3)
I wake each morning
In aching silence that ends
Only when I sleep.

(4/10)
My body twitches
With the perceived exhaustion
Of long-term burnout.

(4/14)
Dissatisfaction
Lingers through my time to sleep
And I watch dawn rise.

(4/18)
I needed the rest
I got these past too-short weeks.
It was not enough.

(4/21)
Rise and shine for work
So no one can tell how much
This project broke you.

(4/29)
An empty day, blank,
With little recorded thought,
As I parsed the fog

(5/1)
I woke peacefully,
But my day has stirred in me
A rage I can’t quell.

(5/5)
Even my poor dreams,
Scattered thoughts with no clear plot,
Say I need more sleep.

(5/8)
I’d be quick to leave
Everything I know behind
If given the chance

(5/9)
I can feel my bones
Collapsing under the weight
Of mere existence.

(5/12)
Am I resigned to
The need for stability
Or just scared of change?

(5/23)
Waking up feels good,
The day gets worse from then on.
I’m so fucking tired.

(5/30)
Rebuilding my life:
A ship of theseus in
More than name alone

(6/5)
I’m unravelling.
It looks like fraying until
I’ve fallen apart.

(6/6)
It’s a pity you
Feel best-served by my silence.
I’ll remember that.

(6/8)
I can’t help but feel
This could have been avoided.
My question was clear.

(6/13)
Bitterness fuels me
When all my good reasons have
Left me hollowed out.

(6/21)
This will be the end.
A decade of gaming done
In less than six months.

(6/22)
Sweating distraction
Logged in to occupy space
While my mind’s elsewhere.

(6/26)
Low expectations
Gird me for battle against
Today’s nothingness.

(7/7)
My spirit broken,
My burnout worse than ever…
Just one more summer.

(7/25)
I am restless not
Because I cannot rest but
From fear of stillness.

(7/31)
Burning my candle
Until all that remains is
Smoke stains on the wall.

(8/5)
He scares me more than
A Scammer’s threat ever could.
Twisted irony.

(8/8)
A slow morning turns
To bubbling anger as I
Fight capitalism.

(8/8)
I want you to know
Apria Healthcare sucks ass.
Fucking burn it down

(8/10)
My day defies words.
I scrape the empty barrel
Just to make a sound.

(8/19)
Is it the burnout
Or all the insomnia?
Turns out that it’s both.

(8/25)
Is there no escape
From the bullshit slop machines?
It makes my soul burn.

(8/28)
Hard won victory
Will carry me through the day.
I don’t want to work.

(8/31 – late)
It was the first time
I did not think about who
I would not hear from.

(9/9)
Sore muscles, blisters,
And too little sleep make for
Such a tiring day.

(9/13)
Yesterday’s anger
Smolders like coals in my heart
As I acquiesce.

(9/18)
Time bends for the worse
And my carefully planned days
Arrive in a mess

(9/29)
A return to work
Is greeted with all the dread
Of a slow nightmare.

(10/5)
Today, I finish
A journey I just began.
Has it been nine months?

(10/7)
The drive I once felt
To write and make and play hard
Has burned itself out.

(10/14)
You would think after
Ten years I’d stop scheduling
Morning therapy…

(10/14)
I can’t help but wish
That you were already dead
So I could mourn you.

(10/14)
Instead, I am trapped,
Caught grieving for the living
Who can’t care for me.

(10/14)
If you haunted me,
Then I could exorcise you
And begin to heal.

(10/14)
Instead, my heart bleeds
With every letter they send
And I can’t forget.

(10/22)
A new letter sent
In a familiar refrain
I thought I’d finished.

(10/27)
An attempt was made.
Returning to bed won out
And I’ve given up.

(10/28)
I can’t hide from it
Now that I’ve said it out loud.
Something has to change.

(11/6)
Pinning my hope on
An evening with my friends
Was unwise to do

(11/9)
I don’t want to sleep.
I want to avoid thinking
As long as I can.

(11/10)
All that happened once
Will repeat as we refuse
To learn from the past.

(11/14)
Am I paranoid
When I’m proven right again?
This brings me no joy.

(11/17)
I don’t want to say
That I was right to worry,
But I was so right.

(11/27)
I am so thankful
That I get to spend today
With people I love.

(12/2)
I am cratering.
I can’t afford to be sick,
But that’s not my choice.

(12/6)
I’m a goop monster.
All I want is some relief,
But goop’s all I get.

(12/9)
I need a minute.
Could everything please just stop
So I can catch up?

(12/12)
A five alarm fire
Landed in my lap and I’m
Already burned out.

(12/17)
It’s never ending.
There will always be more work
Than I can get done.

(12/??)
Time slips away as
I vanish into my rest.
Days have no meaning.

A Lingering Sense Of Danger

Chris Leave a comment

I think I might have the most to say about this poem, at least compared to the ones I’ve written, but I don’t really want to tell you what I meant by it. I hope it’s vague enough for you to find your own meaning but also specific enough for you to find mine (but only after you’ve found yours). It’s a tricky thing, creating metaphors, especially when I want it to straddle the line like this one, but I think I did it this time. I’d like it if you told me what you thought about as you read this or what it made you think about after you’d read it or if you thought at all about it ever again. I’d love to hear what others think of this, but I don’t want to voice what I do, at least not beyond what’s in the poem itself, because I don’t want to lock the meaning down to what I was thinking about as I wrote it. Currently, this is the most recent poem in a collection I’m calling “in retrospect” (or at least that’s what I named the folder it is in) that includes all my recent poem posts. I’m sure there will be more poems in the folder eventually, but if I had to pick one to represent them all, it would be this one.

Continue reading →

Pressing Concerns

Chris Leave a comment

When I sat down and wrote this poem, I was at one of the lowest points of my year, where the only thing keeping me going was the thought that maybe seeing a physical therapist would help fix my sleepless nights, my back pain, and the constant pain that wracked every part of my body as the medications I was taking took their toll on me. I was focused solely on surviving in a way I hadn’t been forced to in decades and while I clearly survived, that period of my life cost me something that’s taking a while to come back, even as my body feels better and my sleep returns to a more normal pattern. Now, I am acutely aware of some of my behavioral ticks that I’d written off for a long time and can’t ignore what they mean any longer. Which is where this poem comes in. I’ll let you decide for yourself what all this adds up to.

Continue reading →

Corporate Priorities

Chris Leave a comment

I set a personal record for how many times the water had automatically shut off while I was trying to wash my hands in the bathroom one day and seethed in frustration at my desk for about fifteen minutes before writing this poem. I understand wanting to save water. I understand the sort of low-volume but highly-aerated water flows that these faucets create. I understand that this is probably the best answer for the environment in some regard. I also know that using a normal faucet lets me quickly clean my hands and rinse them in less than a quarter of time it usually takes me to rinse them under one of these low-volume faucets, even if I cut out the time I spent trying to get the water to turn back on while my hands are covered in soap. Honestly, this one is pretty straight-forward with almost no hidden or subtextual meaning and represents a lot of the frustrations I feel working in corporate environments were policy is chosen based on intention without any attention paid to actual outcomes.

Continue reading →

My Year In Haiku: 2024

Chris Leave a comment

Time for my now-traditional post with a sampling of the journaling Haiku I wrote over the course of last year! This is my third year in a row doing one of these posts, so I feel confident calling it a tradition now. As usual, each of these haiku is titled with the date it represents in my journal, which means you’ll see a few with the same name. These similarly-titled haiku are not necessarily thematically linked, but they sometimes are. The point of journaling in haiku format is to force myself to really focus on what I’m feeling, how I’m feeling it, and what all comes with those feelings, so I try to avoid writing multiple Haiku as that kind of defeats the purpose of thinking it all through until I can express it in three short lines of text. But the human condition is rarely that concise and while I love giving myself unnecessary restrictions and rules to follow, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes rules are meant to be broken and sometimes coloring outside the lines can serve to highlight the moment of deviation as an intentional and important choice.

So here’s a bunch of notes from last year. I’ll warn you now, it was not a great year for me. 2023 was the “most” year I’ve had in my life, maybe, but 2024 is the one where I’ve been the most miserable, which feels like it really says something if you know my personal history… I spent most of it dealing with some amount of constant pain, had a period of sleeplessness that mirrored my teenaged insomnia burst (which I often refer to as the grey/cloudy period of my life), and had such a significant reduction in my personal spoons that I could barely make myself reach out to talk with my friends online. Everything was a struggle at the best of times, thanks to the pain and other side effects of the medication I was on, and yet it was also the most physically demanding year I’ve had at work so far. I tried to avoid picking only the miserable, unhappy haiku, but avoiding all of them would have meant not doing a year-in-review post. So, with that important bit of context in mind (and absolutely no additional context since that’s kind of the subtextual point of these haiku: personal emotional expression devoid of full context), here is what last year looked like in my journal.

Continue reading →

One Star Morning

Chris Leave a comment

This poem is from a month after last week’s. I had noticed a pattern evolving in my life–though it would take until September to notice it in my writing and poetry–that seems so obvious in retrospect. The general pain and stiffness caused by the medications I was taking had turned even the ordinary and simple activities of my life into tasks that now cost me more than they ever had. A cost that would continue going up. I wrote this poem shortly after the first time I realized that my old way of doing things wouldn’t work any more. I had to find a new way to manage myself, my emotions, and where I chose to spend my slowly dwindling energy.

Continue reading →

From A Dry Well

Chris Leave a comment

I like to think that most of my serious metaphors are pretty apt, but I don’t think I’ve tripped and fallen into one so completely apt as this one. It is rare when life’s metaphors line up so perfectly with life, but I’ve never been the sort to let a moment like that go by unremarked. I wrote this after almost six months without writing any poetry, which is a long time for me to go without writing at least SOMETHING, regardless of whether or not it might see the light of day, so I think you can see why it might have struck a chord with me as one of the first things I wanted share when I finally moved my blog to a home where the host isn’t going to sell my data to some “AI” company…

Continue reading →

My Year In Haiku: 2023

Chris Leave a comment

In what will probably become a yearly tradition (two years in a row does not a tradition make, but three definitely does so I look forward to calling this a tradition next year), it is time for my yearly Haiku post! Before I share all these little glimpses into my day-to-day life in 2023, though, I’ve got a couple notes. First and foremost, they’re all titled as the date I wrote them, which can be a bit troubling sometimes since there’s a few from the same date, but they’re not necessarily connected beyond sharing the title. I leave it up to your interpretation to decide if they’re a part of the same message or disconnected expressions. Additionally, and probably most importantly, these aren’t traditional Haiku. Or really Haiku at all, since the structure of them is a part of the poetic form and the whole 5-7-5 thing is an English adaption of a Japanese form of poetry. Unfortunately, we changed a poetical form and reused the name, so I’m pretty much stuck calling them Haiku for the time-being. If you’re one of the handful of people who was about to bust my chops before I wrote this disclaimer, just think of them as structured free-verse poetry. If you weren’t about to bust my chops, then it’s fine and we can keep calling them Haiku because language shifts and changes and I think its fine to reuse names in new ways for things that people used to be confused about.

Continue reading →

Cell Phone Thoughts

Chris Leave a comment

I used to wonder why I never saw my cell phone in my dreams, or why I never even thought about it while dreaming. Then I was grateful, since it meant I could escape it’s constant presence in my life. Now, I wonder if it’s been a part of my dreams all this time, just in a way I didn’t recognize because the parts of it that matter in the way that dreams matter seemed so similar to my own thoughts.

Continue reading →