Standing on the Ledge: A New Day, and the “Not-Feeling” Day

Side note up front: I’m fine. I’m going to be okay. I just needed to rant and get this out of my head and into words.

Today started out good. I had enthusiasm. I had momentum. I was moving.

And then the day progressed… and something in me flipped.

I got angry about things. Not even one clean, simple thing. Just the pile of it. The accumulation. The sense that I’m always pushing, always trying, always carrying weight that nobody else seems to notice.

And then it wasn’t anger anymore.

It wasn’t sadness either. It wasn’t grief. It wasn’t even frustration in the normal sense. It was… not. That’s the best word I’ve got. Not anger. Not sadness. Not joy. Not connection. Just this hollow, numb, disconnected static. Like nothing matters. Like nothing I do lights anything up.

It’s a weird kind of “blank” that still hurts. The absence itself becomes the feeling.

The part that’s burning me out

Here’s what keeps replaying in my head.

Since 2011, I feel like I’ve given and given and given. Time. Effort. Patience. Help. Chances. Leadership. I’ve asked for people to give back, and half the time it’s like I’m talking to a stone.

In the last seven years I’ve worked for three different employers. I went into business myself. I tried to give people employment and stability. And over the last three years, out of probably twenty people I employed, I can count maybe three who genuinely got it and gave it their all.

This isn’t “get off my lawn” burnout. This is the other kind:

• “I’m depleted” burnout.
• “I’m mentally distancing from everything” burnout.
• “Nothing I do seems to work anymore” burnout.

If you want a clean definition, burnout is often described as a response to chronic, unmanaged work stress: energy depletion, increased mental distance/cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.¹

A psychological lens (just a map, not a label)

When people say “burnout,” most of the time they mean “tired.” But days like today feel more like the system hitting a circuit breaker.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that the capacity to feel gets blunted when the tank has been running dry for too long.

There’s language for pieces of that experience:

• Anhedonia is often described as a markedly diminished interest or pleasure in activities.²
• Dissociation can describe a kind of disconnection between thoughts, feelings, actions, or sense of self (and it can show up in mild, everyday ways too).³

To be clear: I’m not diagnosing myself with anything here. I’m naming the texture of the day. I’m giving the fog a shape so it’s not just “me being broken.”

A sociological lens: reciprocity, exchange, and the “stone wall” effect

Part of why this hits so hard isn’t just personal. It’s social.

There’s a basic rule most of us live by, whether we say it out loud or not: if you keep showing up for people, there’s an expectation of some kind of return over time. Not applause. Not trophies. Just reciprocity. A sign that your effort isn’t vanishing into the void.

Social exchange theory talks about relationships as ongoing exchanges where people keep participating when the returns feel worth the costs.⁴ The norm of reciprocity is that “there’s a general obligation to repay benefits.”⁵

So when I say it’s like “talking to a stone,” what I mean is: I keep putting value into the system, and the system keeps failing to return the minimum human signal that it mattered.

And there’s another layer people don’t always name: the emotional management part. The steady “stay professional,” “stay calm,” “stay constructive,” “be the leader,” “don’t lose it,” even when you’re running on fumes. That kind of emotional work has been written about as a real form of labor: managing feelings and expression to meet the demands of a role.⁶

Put those together long enough, and eventually you don’t just get tired. You get detached.

What I think today is actually telling me

Today isn’t proof that nothing matters.

Today is evidence that I’m depleted.

Meaning doesn’t disappear first. Energy does. And when energy drops low enough, meaning goes offline right after it. That’s the sequence.

So I’m treating this as a system alert, not a verdict.

What I’m doing with it (small, practical, no heroics)

I’m not going to try to fix my entire life tonight. I’m going to keep it small and real:

• One honest outlet: this post. Getting it out of my chest and onto the page.
• One basic reset: food, water, and a little sleep, even if it’s messy sleep.
• One visible win: one small task that ends with a clean edge and a finished checkbox, because my brain needs proof that things can complete.

That’s it. No speeches. No perfect “healing arc.” Just keeping the thread intact until the chemistry shifts and tomorrow has a chance to feel different.

Godspeed.

Footnotes / References

1. World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). ↩
2. Rizvi, S. J., Pizzagalli, D. A., Sproule, B. A., & Kennedy, S. H. (2023). Anhedonia and depressive disorders. (Notes DSM-5 definition of anhedonia.) ↩
3. American Psychiatric Association. (n.d.). What are dissociative disorders? ↩
4. Cropanzano, R., & Mitchell, M. S. (2005). Social exchange theory: An interdisciplinary review. (Includes Blau’s framing of exchange as actions contingent on rewarding reactions from others.) ↩
5. Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. ↩
6. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. ↩