Day 16: Charming, Always Liked, and Brain Dead

I’d walk into a room and think, ‘Okay, how can I make sure everyone in this room loves me and is charmed by me?' And that takes a LOT of energy! -Anonymous

I'm no stranger to burnout (I even made an app for it). IMO, burnout is caused by anything that chronically saps your energy.

I overthink a lot of my social interactions, to the point where it takes up so much of my mental capacity. How much is this costing me? I probably drain myself by trying to make my daily interactions a 10/10, and that lowers my cognitive abilities so I have to work even HARDER to come up with a way to be charming/liked. And that increased work only increases my burnout until all my words are like a 3/10 and I'm a nervous wreck whose brain can only toggle between 'overthink' mode and 'stare at walls' mode.

Lately I've been making an effort to stop giving a fuck as much. It's really hard, to let go of that kind of control. To just press 'send' on an imperfect twitter DM or to be super awkward around a new friend, and just let it be. And frankly I still suck at it. But this destructive pattern has got to stop.