burnt out from being burnt out
featuring weirdly intense emotions and a new Animal Crossing poem
I’m reflecting on capitalism and tokenization and race and gender and the way I don’t even feel like going outside as a queer brown person anymore. Shocking, I know. My health has hit a low point. I wish I could take a break to feel better about things but, again, as a person who exists under capitalism, taking a break would also mean taking a break from food, electricity, etc. I don’t have the security to simply Not Work for more than a couple days at a time. And while I’m not working from 7:30am to 10pm like I was most weekdays during grad school and even undergrad, I feel worse in some ways. (But better in many others! Mainly because everyone in my house is a queer & trans person of color. It is glorious. But I digress.)
It gets worse when I start to feel guilty for the burn out, because hey, I’m 24 and I have a masters degree. That is no small feat and no small privilege. At 17, a foundation gave me a full ride to college after a long application process that started when I was 16, and now I have something that only few in the Chicanx Educational Pipeline have1. I am aware of the immense privilege of it.2 I’m not writing all of this for any type of reaction other than making sense of what I’ve experienced.
I finally woke up at a somewhat normal time today. I’m making myself write for my job and also for my not-job (hello, reader). And I finally decided to google “burn out after masters degree.” Isn’t it the worst? When you’re so desperate for relief you resort to googling your existential shit?
And to make matters worse, Reddit sometimes comes through when you google your feelings! I found a post that made me cry with how relatable it was. I’m not sure of any facet of OP’s identity other than recent college grad, but I think part of my weepiness comes from knowing, especially as a freshman the year 45 was be elected, that people will find any excuse to dismiss your intelligence and personhood. I think I’m grieving for that 17 year old that should have just, idk, chilled out a little? But what choice did I have? Probably others, but at the time, I didn’t know any other way out of a painful adolescence.
Well. This got heavier than I thought it would. My favorite thing about teaching was when students would remark “wow, I didn’t know I felt this way until I wrote about it.” Often I’m still gripped by that realization. I guess that’s why we return to the page, right?
While I was busy [redacted health information] for the last week or so, my partner and I have been playing a shit ton of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Fun fact: Wild World was actually my first ever video game, followed by Pókemon Pearl :’)
I’ve been stressing about poetry writers’ block— which is ridiculous! I have a full-length manuscript that’s 99% done— but last night, I suddenly had the urge to write a fun poem while my partner ran around my island trying to steal all the valuable fish from Lorctown’s3 plentiful oceans.
So, here’s the poem.
Direct me to any Nintendo poems pls and thanks. (Highly highly recommend the poetry chapbook Capable Monsters by Marlin M. Jenkins.)
Recent reads: Brandon Taylor’s The Late Americans, K. Iver’s Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco, Samantha Irby’s Quietly Hostile
Recent watches: Degrassi: Next Class until I get locked out of netflix, Naruto: Shippuden
Recent listens: Hot Mulligan’s Why Would I Watch. I am intentionally avoiding AJJ’s album, as much as I love the lead single “Disposable Everything”
All this to say, I’m going to get through this, right? Thanks for reading & starting your morning off with me
<3
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You may have noticed a fancy new paid option for this newsletter. This is to support my writing & the many life transitions (get it?) I’m experiencing at the moment. If you subscribe as a founding member I’ll send you a zine grab bag! But I promise trans poetica will always always remain free. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
I had to dig up an old final project to find these sources again and it’s… a really good paper on writing program administrators of color that sent me into a month long depression (spoiler: we are treated bad until we leave or become desensitized)
My cat is named after Lorca. My island is named after my cat.