The Burnout No One Talks About: Running in Circles in My Own Mind

The quiet panic always finds me at night. Not in a dramatic way where I’m gasping for air or crying under the blanket — but in the slower, quieter kind of ache. The kind that doesn’t even raise its voice. It just lingers. The panic of wanting too much, yet moving nowhere.

By midnight, the world outside finally softens. Cars fade, voices hush, even the stray dogs stop barking. But inside, my mind refuses to rest. It performs its usual ritual — opening doors, running circles, dangling possibilities in front of me like shiny keys I can never quite hold.

The tabs on my laptop glow like a confession. One shows me flights, places I’ve always wanted to go, and escape plans that feel romantic until I remember the part where I actually have to pack my life into a bag. Another is a job listing — one of many — each one whispering, you could do this, you’d be good at this, even if none of them feel alive to me. Somewhere in the mess of my desktop, a folder waits — full of half-finished projects and “brilliant” ideas I once swore I’d pursue. Now it’s just a graveyard of starts without endings.

It’s not ambition that I lack. If anything, ambition overflows in me — too many dreams, too many versions of who I could be. What I lack is gravity. Something that holds me down long enough to let one version grow roots. Something that says: stay here, build here, commit here.

But instead, I keep spinning in mental circles. Not burnout from doing too much, but from imagining too much. A kind of exhaustion that comes not from work, but from the weight of everything I haven’t yet lived. Standing at the edge of all these lives, I peek in and try them on, but never move far enough to claim them. Because choosing one feels like killing off all the others. And so I stay suspended in the middle — a waiting room between lifetimes.

I imagine them often, these other versions of me. The traveler who owns nothing but freedom and speaks three languages like second nature. The writer who rises with the sun, drafts pages while the world is quiet, and finds her rhythm in words. The entrepreneur who builds something meaningful and small, tired but purposeful. The one who is soft, the one who is bold. All of them feel real in my head, yet none of them are truly me. I love them all, but in trying to love every version, I live as none.

And here is the truth I don’t like admitting: it’s not procrastination, not laziness, not even lack of clarity. It’s fear. Fear that if I choose wrong, I’ll waste years of my life. Fear that if I throw myself into something fully, I’ll still discover I’m not enough. Fear that if I finally do the thing I care most about, failing will hurt too much to recover from.

So I wait. I hesitate. I protect myself from disappointment by holding back, as if delaying the start will shield me from the pain of what could happen. But the longer I wait, the heavier the waiting gets.

They told us when we were younger, you can be anything you want. And it sounded like a gift. But no one warned us about the curse of it — how having too many doors open can paralyze you. How potential itself can feel like a haunting, a shadow that follows you around whispering, look at everything you still haven’t done.

Some nights, it swallows me whole. I sit in the dim light of my room, with thoughts flashing like neon signs: move here, start this, change that. Regrets sneak in like alleyway thieves: you should’ve started earlier, worked harder, figured it out by now.

Other nights, I light a candle just to remind myself I can create a little calm in the chaos. Or I scribble a to-do list that feels more like a prayer than a plan. And sometimes, like tonight, I just write. Not because writing fixes everything, but because it anchors me for a moment.

Because here’s what I’m starting to believe: movement doesn’t always begin with a grand decision. Sometimes it begins with one small act — applying to one opportunity even if it terrifies me, writing one page even if it feels messy, choosing one little shift that says: I’m still trying.

Maybe it’s not about becoming everything. Maybe it’s about allowing this incomplete version of me to exist, to breathe, to stumble forward anyway. Maybe the truth is simpler than I make it: I don’t have to be all of them. I just have to be me — even if she is still a work in progress.

And maybe that’s enough. Or maybe… that’s a start.