Is Anybody Happy?

Other generations were on a journey. Ours is on a f*cking treadmill.

Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.

I hesitate to call it burnout. Burnout implies that balance can be restored through rest or vacation. That’s not what this is. I worked in startup culture for a decade I can spot burnout at fifty paces with my back turned. My current sentiment is very different, indicated by an extended duration and a seemingly incurable residency at my body’s baseline. I know what it’s like to be tired, overworked, and sick of striving. The reason I don’t want to call it burnout is you’re not supposed to be sick of the fun stuff, too.

Lack of interest, a general malaise, the complete absence of oomph. If you take your eye off the ball, you’ll call it depression. But that’s not what I’m feeling. There isn’t a presence of hopelessness, I don’t feel forlorn about myself or my life. Instead, what I think is happening is an adulthood awakening to an extended experience with bullshit. So many people I know are looking around at life wondering when it’s going to get good, when the future we were trained to pursue is going to get here, when things are going to make sense so that we can stop listening to growth-mindset podcasts and meditating all the goddamned time. We were baited with one life and we’re living another. Happy? Please. We’d be burning buildings down if gasoline was cheaper.