Burnout: Exhaustion and Overwhelm in the Tarot

Last weekend, I stumbled on Anne Helen Petersen’s The Burnout Generation interview series on Audible. I’ve never been an audio book listener. I like the feel of books. I like underlining books. I even (perhaps oddly) like the smell of the paper pulp. Lately, however, I just can’t muster the energy to read and increasingly rely on audio books as a way of feigning “constructive use” of time spent under the duvet. Am I burned out? I’ve wondered, since the combination of procrastination, lack of motivation, perpetual fatigue, and emotional emptiness are brewing beneath the surface.

I obviously missed Petersen’s 2019 BuzzFeed article on burnout, reading it only after listening to the Audible series. My curiosity was piqued by an attribution Petersen makes to the World Health Organization’s 2019 declaration of burnout as an occupational condition. According to the WHO, whose definition I will quote at length here:

“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
• reduced professional efficacy.

Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.” (Emphasis mine.)