Today I had a long chat with an old friend. We hadn't spoken in a while, and somewhere in the conversation I opened up about the burnout (I call it a burnout, not sure what exactly it is) I've been struggling with. What surprised me was that it wasn't unique — he'd been through something similar a few months ago.
We ended up talking for over an hour.
After we hung up, I realised something that's been sitting with me all evening: I miss my old friends. I miss those conversations. The kind where you'd talk about the future, about the plans, about how we were going to go out there and kick some serious ass (not physically, of course).
Those conversations were stimulating. They left you walking away with more energy than you started with, not less. You felt sharper, more ambitious, more sure of who you were becoming. It's the kind of thing that's easy to take for granted when you have it — and impossible to replace when you don't.
Life pulls people in different directions. Jobs, families, cities, time zones. The gaps between calls stretch from weeks to months to years, and before you know it, you're the guy who realises — after a single hour-long phone call — just how much you've been missing.
Maybe that's the lesson from today. Burnout isn't only about work. Sometimes it's about the slow drift away from the people who used to light you up.
I think I'm going to pick up the phone more often.