empires may rise and fall, but the dishes never stop

Well, I'm officially in age-appropriate new mid-life crisis territory now, and then this came across my twitter feed: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. It is another terribly long article, but I read the whole thing on my phone while the Megatherium watched Wild Krats* and it's full of pull quotes like: "Exhaustion means going to the point where you can’t go any further; burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going, whether for days or weeks or years." and “'To adult' is to complete your to-do list — but everything goes on the list, and the list never ends."

I am in that awkward gap that gets pushed back and forth between GenX and Millennial, sometimes called the Oregon Trail generation, and while normally "You have died of dysentery" is much more representative of my formative experience than 1980s teens or killing off industries, this is where I live. And yet I can wave words like "burnout" and "mid-life crisis" in front of me like talismans and while they may explain the state of my kitchen, they will not do the dishes, which are once again stacked so high in the sink that I have to refill my teacup in the bathroom. And for some reason one of the oven racks got put on top of the stovetop, and various things subsequently piled on top of it (for which there is no space in the sink) so the only cooking surfaces usable are the microwave and the toaster. This is not ok. But I keep walking away from it anyway.


*Far superior to Paw Patrol! A pair of looney environmentalists with brilliant poc tech girls for support staff, and we seem to have switched favorite series smoothly.