I think burnout is often a challenge we come across too many times when trying to change things up. Society often appears so rigid at a glance that even a small "bend" in the line of normalcy is often frowned upon. They then try to nag you with other stuff like school, homework, and other life things to make sure that this normalcy is completely fine, which we all know isn't.
And I think for me, I've done less than I thought I could accomplish in these past months after our summit, mainly because of many past fails that I've suffered. My family has consistently tried to harvest vegetables from our own gardens - but we often lose most of them. I tried to find ways to get people to recycle more, and how to get rid of plastic waste in our school - it failed. I tried to grow some trees and plant them later next to the forest we live near - they died six weeks in. I tried to compost some food waste that we generate - the compost turned out slushy and gummy, infested with bugs. I tried to eliminate meat from my diet - and now I found myself allergic to tofu and nuts, two very important sources of protein in a non-meat diet. I tried to get my parents to use tote bags when they went shopping - they would still return with plastic bags.
Now, after having all of these setbacks since 2020 began - I feel like I'm back at square one, but this time with so many options knocked out, I don't know where to go now. I know a few options I'm considering going down, but because of so many things I've tried to do that kept failing, I've been really scared on embracing yet another fail, and haven't really done anything.
Why might I be experiencing burnout, though?
Firstly, maybe my solutions weren't aggressive enough. I've always known that being too aggressive is something society disapproves of in general, but if I weren't aggressive enough, would that make people just not care as much?
Next, what about my personal nature? I'm usually someone that takes a setback quite strongly, and I really hate it when I have to let something or someone down. I think this fear is applying here, and I still haven't acknowledged that failure is a part of climate activism.
Lastly, a lack of support from others might be why. Doesn't teamwork make the dream work? The only problem with this was that I really didn't have others to help me before, during, and after the efforts - I think if you don't have the support of others (from you reaching out to them and vice versa) then it becomes hard to rebound.
I feel like if I can't be a leader myself, I need to be leaders with others. I'm definitely going to go back to all the resources shared by the speakers shared in the summit, but I still wanted to share this to make sure others could know and relate.