HEAVY LOAD
Lately, no matter who I talk to, one subject eventually seeps into the conversation. It’s not the vaccine rollout, or work, or the strange state of the world. No – people want to talk about fatigue. Not so much a case of burnout or lack of sleep, more a cloudy and forgetful feeling of apathy that’s settled over us in 2021 as the pandemic drags on.
Friends and colleagues share their symptoms quietly, knowing how lucky we are here in Australia. No one wants to sound ungrateful, what they really want to know is: Why am I feeling like this now?
“Last year I ate badly, I stayed up until 3am scrolling my phone. It was stressful and different, but I still was able to accomplish things,” says Alicia, a 35-year-old living in Melbourne with her partner. She studies part-time while working four days a week, and ended up doing 10 uni subjects last year. “This year I’m trying really hard to get back to the gym and back into my routine, eat better and do all the right things for my mental health, but suddenly I can’t function. I’m only doing one subject at uni and I can’t concentrate. Some days I can’t even look at a computer.”
She’s definitely not alone. A friend working in marketing recently uploaded a work post on social media about a charity event her company was running … only to later realise she’d shared a link about the new Spice World movie instead. Another left her laptop on the roof of her car and drove all the way home. Struggling to find the right words, cooking dinner without turning on the oven, flooding the laundry … the anecdotes are endless.
“THE ARTIFICIALNESS OF GOING BACK TO WORK WHILE STILL NOT KNOWING WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE WEEKS AND MONTHS TO COME IS FEEDING INTO THE MENTAL FATIGUE”
In one of her more concerning
