but they don't care about the burnout. everyone is burnt out, they tell me. who isn't burnt out!
the good news is they don't say depression is a choice as much anymore, but the symptoms for burn out and depression are so hand-in-hand that they are mirror images of each other. but depression is serious. you're not depressed, you're just whiny. they barely change the script - don't be lazy! burn out is for people with real problems. burn out can be resolved with some fun candles and a day off work. burn out only happens in adults - no kid can be burnt out, after all; they've barely even had a life to live!
do you have a roof over your head and a steady job? you're not burnt out. so what if every night you wake up with a panic attack frothing inside your chest. you're lucky your problems are small. get back into plants or into yoga. shut up about it.
rich people get burnt out and go to fancy places. they get burnt out in their fancy offices with their real-people problems. they get burnt out and hire an assistant to help them never burn out again. you don't have the money to burn out. you don't have the two weeks to recover in a local spa. the job you come back to will still be stressful and hard.
you find yourself often wondering - does nobody remember about the pandemic? it seems almost like a joke or a punchline. being burnt-out was okay "during" the pandemic. now that people are back to ignoring covid, burnout is just-an-excuse again.
you google how to know if it's seasonal affective disorder or burnout. you google how to know if it's anxiety or it's burnout from working.
you google how to know if my depression is back or i'm burning out badly.
coming back from burnout just leaves you covered in ashes, not new growth. you struggle to get back basics, and then - you're just supposed to get back up and keep going. every day the amount of tasks you are able to do seems to dwindle even further - where does the time go? why is everything moving so-fast-and-yet-so-slow?
my therapist and i were talking about how many people had latent mental illnesses that were triggered by the pandemic. how depression can be environmental and situational. i am annoyingly logic-driven about my own recovery - i like to be sure i'm working on the "right" thing. i tell her i feel like i'm lying. that it just might be burnout, and i need to stop complaining. she asks me what words come to mind when i think of burning.
oh, i guess i see.
we casually ignore the violence of being left empty.
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Fun Fact: Oilbirds are Basically BatBirds!
I want to talk about these amazing birds:
I love them. I mean, look at their big, shiny eyes! NO ONE can say that they aren’t cute as hell!
The other reason I love these animals is because they’re basically what happens when evolution tries to make a bat out of a bird.
These little guys are known as oilbirds (Steatornis caripensis), and are also called guácharo (and also several other things, because they are found in South America, plus Trinidad & Tobago, which all have INCREDIBLE language diversity).
Oilbirds are nocturnal, flying around the forests of South America at night looking for fruit to eat. They also live colonially in caves, which they navigate using echolocation.
So, to review:
(I’m making my Generic Bats a very generic fruit bat, for the record).
Oilbirds are the only birds with this combination of traits, which I think is pretty cool of them! Why are they so much like bats? Basically, when different types of animals evolve under similar selective pressures, they often evolve the same features! This is called convergent evolution, and wow I talk about it a lot on this blog! It turns out that nocturnal animals that live in caves and eat fruit can sometimes benefit from traits like these!
(they’re, like... spooky-cute. Cute-spooky? Either way, I like them a lot)
So, if these birds are flying around at night, how do they stop themselves from flying into things while searching for that tasty, tasty fruit?
Well, in the forest, they mostly rely on their AMAZING night vision (which is another trait they share with bats, fyi). That is why they have such big, adorable eyes, which has a lot of light-sensing cells called rods. They actually hold a record for the density of the rods in their eyes: one million per square millimetre. That is the highest density of any known vertebrate. It’s about 6x denser than the rods found in human eyes!
...still cute
Their amazing vision allows them to see very well in low light, which is how they navigate the South American jungles at night, searching for food under the moon and stars. That said, their vision just doesn’t cut it when it comes to flying in the caves they call home. Why? Well, caves are dark as hell, and even the best night-vision can’t do anything for you when there’s no light at all. Plus, flying into cave walls/ cliff faces hurts, so it’s good to be extra sure you’re not flying into solid rock!
So how do they find their way around these dark caves? Well, they use something very unusual for birds: echolocation!
Oilbirds are one of only a few species of birds that are known to use echolocation (the others are a few species of the closely-related swiflets (Collocaliini), but I HAVE DECIDED TODAY IS FOR THE OILBIRDS im sorry, swiflets, ilu2).
Look at them, not flying into rocks! I’m so proud (˃̣̣̥ ◡ ˂̣̣̥)
Also, a bonus fact, because idk where to fit this but I MUST mention it:
They have little whiskers around their beaks (which are technically called “rictal bristles”, but I’m going to call them “whiskers” because I like that word better). These whiskers are basically used to feel things that they have in and around their mouth, helping them find, manipulate, and eat their tasty fruit!
...moustache...
This has been Fun Fact Friday!
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