Y'all saw this coming
Me and The Wall had a violent collision the other night.

Marathon runners speak of The Wall, the signal that the runner has taken his or her endurance past its limit. "I've hit The Wall." For most, it hits at about the 19- or 20-mile mark. The champion marathon runner scales The Wall mentally, catches a second wind and presses on. The weaker runners collapse in a sobbing heap of muscle spasms and shin splints.

For many years, I have scoffed at The Wall. I always thought burnout was for losers, for whiny suburban corporate guys whose jobs didn't generate their own energy. That's what I've always loved about journalism, and it's what has made me think for all these years that I had beaten the system. "I've never had a job," I have often said. The pursuit of a big story in many ways is its own reward. Challenging a deadline and beating it is a rush like few others. Knowing something nobody else knows; well, there's just nothing better. Coming up with the last-minute idea that takes a good page to brilliant is like hitting a 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds showing on the clock. Making the catch that saves the newspaper from an embarrassing error was, for me, like making the catch to win the Super Bowl.

Burnout -- that's for stockbrokers and accountants and bankers and Mariah Carey and people who work in offices.

I've been wrong about a lot of things in recent weeks. I can add the above assertion to the list.

I hope I'm not wrong about the following: I'm sure this is temporary. It's been a pretty stressful time in the news world, especially here on the Edge of America. We've had teams making Super Bowl runs, we've had space shuttles falling out of the sky, and now we have war. There's nothing particularly inspiring about any of that.

A lot of things about burnout suck:

I thought I could solve it by just doing my job a little bit better. I put in a call into my usually reliable energy reserves -- and damned if they're not answering. Instead, I'm hyper-sensitive about every little mistake I make. The best way to not make mistakes or errors in judgment is to simply keep one's mouth shut. That's never been my philosophy, but I suddenly see the merits in that line of thinking.

I'm becoming an asshole. I'm becoming one at work, and worse, I'm becoming one at home. The Wife is doing everything she possibly can to help. She's offering suggestions, she's propping me up when necessary, and she's hollering at me when it's necessary. She basically goaded me into standing up for myself in a work situation today, an instance where I normally would have just said, "uh, OK," and hated myself for it. Instead, I stood up for myself, and I'm not entirely sure I should have, despite the fact that I know it was the right thing to do.

I question every decision I make. I'm questioning whether I should post this or if I should call on my trio of close friends, Click, Drag and Delete. I'm questioning whether I should go to sleep or stay up all night. Come morning, I'll question whether I should get out of bed. I'll make several perfectly fine decisions at work tomorrow, then question whether I should have gone the other way. That's a hell of a cycle in which to be stuck.

I'm bothered that I even think like this. My patience for whiners is less than nil. I don't like that I'm becoming one. And those who have followed this forum for the last several months can be excused for believing that I might never find true satisfaction.

But they tell me the first step toward solving a problem is admitting that you have one. Now I need to thumb through the directions and find Step 2.