About this passageWritten for this collection. It concerns ordinary exhaustion rather than clinical depression or burnout, which are different things with different treatments, and it is not offered as a substitute for either.
Tiredness lies about its own cause. It presents as a failure of character — you are lazy, you are behind, you should be managing this — when the actual reading is much duller. You have been carrying something for a long time and have not put it down.
Some of the weight is not yours. A surprising amount of what people carry was handed to them by somebody who was glad to be rid of it, and it can be set down at any point, though rarely without an argument.
Some of it is yours and cannot be set down. That is not the same as being crushed by it. Weight that is genuinely yours becomes carriable in a way that weight you are merely holding for somebody else never does.
The test is simple and unwelcome: if it were finally finished, would you rest, or would you find the next thing? Most people know the answer immediately, and most people do not like it.