On Being Productive While in Burnout

As I try to type this out, my thoughts feel alive, like they exist in real time, while remaining unreachable — like they’re there, but behind glass. I can hear them, sense them, but not quite express them in the way I want to. I’ve been signing up for things. Creative writing online for autistic adults .T’ai chi — also online, for autistic adults. A late-diagnosed women’s group. AuDHD peer support. The creative writing group met on Wednesday. I signed up that same morning leaving no time to overthink, which is probably the only reason I followed through. The others don’t start until end of April. I think I joined them because I have hope — or maybe I’m trying to conjure hope — that they might bring me closer to some kind of comfortable understanding of myself, within this world. Something softer .Something that fits. On the flip side, I don’t really enjoy leaving the house. Nor am I always fit enough to leave the house. Remaining optimistic, and willing to try, I booked anyway. I’m sick of being stuck in with no choice. Sick of being sick. Bored. So I sit in this strange contradiction: wanting change, resisting change. Wanting connection, avoiding it. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. Always both. There’s a polarity to everything right now — a constant internal push and pull that feels jarring. I can feel composed one moment, almost steady, and then sense how quickly it could flip. Zero to one hundred with very little warning. I move between liking myself and then, just as quickly, not. Between feeling capable and completely overwhelmed. There’s a version of me that is level-headed, helpful, caring — the one I recognise as me. And then there’s the anger. I've learned it’s based around fear, when I experience episodes where I don’t feel in control of my emotions or behaviour, I meltdown(anger) or shutdown(silent withdrawal).It doesn’t ask permission. It just takes over. Inside this state, I’ve had to redefine what “productive” even means. Because the old definition — the one built on output and achievement — doesn’t belong here. Right now, productive means something much smaller. Much quieter. It means achieving basic daily life. Getting up. Showering. Feeding myself. Responding to what needs responding to — not everything though, not anymore. It means creating a routine that offers direction, but still allows spontaneity. A life structured, but not rigid. Self-Guidance, not pressure. Because pressure is what broke things in the first place. Burnout, especially this kind — the kind that lives in the nervous system, in the body, in the mind all at once — doesn’t respond to force. It resists it. So I’m learning to work with it instead of against it. Some days that looks like doing very little, but doing it intentionally. Other days it looks like brief sparks of energy — signing up to something, showing up, trying. Even when part of me doesn’t want to be there. That’s the strange thing. Hope and resistance exist side by side. I don’t think one cancels the other out .I think this is just what it looks like to be in the middle of something — not at the start, not at the end. Just here. Trying. And maybe, for now, that counts as productive.