APRIL | moodboard

dreaming of ....

a woodland getaway 

elements for brand development from Lara's Wonderland ♥

a cup of tea 

adventure and discovery

Happy April Dreaming ......

                    xoxo, ande

ALWAYS ON | how we became the burnout generation

I'm sharing this article, found on TIG, {I, by the way, love their weekly articles of interest.  They find the most fascinating articles from all around.  Talk about having your fingers on the pulse.}  

This one struck me because these are issues I see affecting people close to me and even myself lately, and it is so debilitating that it can literally ruin your life.  I will say, this is a new complex for me.  The first part of my adult life was spent 'fighting the battle' with much zeal and reaping the rewards of that hard work.  Success came, and I had the ability to buy homes, land and cars, all before my mid 30's.  Now those things, which by the way provide protection from a chaotic world, seem far from attainable, even though I and my husband have completed bachelors degrees in tech fields.  I dont know if its the combination of extreme competition in the job market, the requirements of total subservience of time and self to the 'job', or our existence in social media that leads to a total disconnect from real life.  I think this article examines the differences between our image portrayed on social media, our image portrayed in the workforce and then, finally, at home and how all of the image juggling affects us.  These days I definitely see, without a doubt, that this 'ennui' is prevalent.

Maybe the insight will help us all to face it and deal.

"Technologies that mediate the self heighten consciousness, but that doesn’t mean they are empowering ... "

In December, it’s common for writers to highlight some of their best work from the year in Twitter threads. Almost without exception, these threads seem laced with self-deprecating humor, irony, or, more often, some combination of both. A more matter-of-fact or even earnest tone was somehow not an option; instead what seemed required was a kind of ironic disavowal of disavowal with regard to our online presentation: The tone foregrounds the idea that we all must put on an act that fools no one. I was sympathetic myself. Truth be known, I didn’t post such a thread precisely because I didn’t think I could pull that tone off.

That tone’s peculiar kind of self-consciousness seemed to me connected to the anecdotes of depleted willpower that Anne Helen Petersen described in “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” Take, for example, Tim, who could not quite manage to register to vote ahead of the 2018 elections, or Petersen herself, who admits to what she calls “errand paralysis”: “I’d put something on my weekly to-do list, and it’d roll over, one week to the next, haunting me for months.”

Millennials, of course, are not the first to feel a persistent sense of depletion. Among the historical antecedents, as Petersen notes, is neurasthenia, a nervous condition frequently diagnosed in the 19th century. Another antecedent is acedia, a combination of indifference, apathy, carelessness, self-loathing, and sleepiness that early Christian monks called the “noonday devil.” The term referred to an inability to get things done,........

"In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argues that “totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous.” Superfluity, as Arendt uses the term, suggests some combination of thoughtless automatism, interchangeability, and expend-ability. A person is superfluous when they operate within a system in a completely predictable way and can, as a consequence, be easily replaced. Individuality is worse than meaningless in this context; it threatens the system and must be eradicated."

                    continue reading at Real Life ....