I’m Burnt Out ~ 2024-05-24

I was supposed to have a video completed today.

Instead, the script is still only halfway done and I’ve grown increasingly frustrated at it. For the first time since college, I think I’m burnt out.

The completed edit timeline for the Greensburg Minidoc.

May 2024 has been incredibly crazy. I started the month sprinting to finish the Greensburg minidoc. I completed it with ease before my self-imposed deadline of May 4th (the 17th anniversary of the Greensburg EF5). I wrapped up the edit the day before and scheduled it for release. My workflow was humming and I felt in the zone. Watching back the edit I was extremely proud of the end result for this video. As a reward, that weekend was going to be a nice break.

I traveled to Pittsburgh for the weekend to spend time with my girlfriend as we cheered on her brother who was running his first ever marathon. He crushed it, finishing under 3 hours by the way. I was not looking at my phone much that weekend. Normally, I can get pretty obsessive watching the YouTube Studio app to monitor video performance when a video goes live. The video had been live for a little less than 24 hours when I finally checked the app.

100,000 views in under a day.

Are you KIDDING me?

That was BY FAR, the strongest performance any of my videos I’ve ever made have had out of the gate. As of today, May 24th, it is 2nd place in views amongst all June First videos. That minidoc was a resounding success. It makes sense why it did well. Strong writing, great editing, released on the anniversary of the event, coupled with an insane stretch of severe weather these past few weeks, all of that contributed to its success.

Coming back from Pittsburgh, I was ready to start the next documentary. I decided to double-down on iconic EF5s; the Piedmont EF5 in 2011. Its anniversary was May 24th, which gave me 2.5 weeks to pull together a 10 minute minidoc. I’ve turned around longer videos in less time so it should be no problem, right? But as I started to write it, it just wasn’t working. Normally I can get into a pretty smooth writing rhythm and just word-vomit a script together to a point where I can trim the fat in the end and figure out the pacing that makes sense for a video. I couldn’t do it though. I was fixating on every sentence, trying to dial it in perfectly from the start, something I never do. Why was this time different?

Meanwhile, my normal day job of being an engineer was wearing on me. Without getting into specifics, I found out that a design that I had worked on and off on for two years essentially didn’t work. I made all of the 3D models, did all of the analysis, created all of the technical drawings, and so on. It was my first real assembly. It was all MY work and I was proud of it. Parts were made and shipped to our site for assembly. They were all put together as I intended, installed into the greater system where they belong… and sure enough it just didn’t work, like AT ALL.

I wasn’t really on that project anymore, so I found out about it late. Once I found out though, it crushed me. Not only the idea that my design will probably cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in the end, but the fact that my design decisions failed the team, the team that put trust in me to execute on. In the grand scheme of things, I’m a young engineer with not a ton of experience. There had been plenty of peer reviews of this design and it all got signed off on, so I know rationally it isn’t all my fault. But deep down, it's still my design and it failed. Therefore, I failed.

Multi-Vortex Tornado near Greenfield, IA on May 21st, 2024. Captured by Reed Timmer.

I can usually leave work for the day and leave my problems there and come home fresh to work on what I truly love, June First. This time around though, that negative headspace of my failed design came home with me. In dealing with that failure at my day job, I was now trying to channel my previous video success into this new script to maybe somehow prove to myself that I’m not a failure. Nonetheless, the combined strong success of a video and failure at work meant that this new script was doomed to my high level of scrutiny. This perpetuated a negative feedback loop spiral, compounding this failure feeling more and more. Now here we are, May 24th, with no video. The Downward Spiral won.

In a few weeks, I’ll be westward bound once again with my brother to chase. Normally we chase in May. This year though, due to some non-negotiable commitments, we opted for a late chase trip in mid June. While we’ve had success in May, we seem to always miss the stacked tornado weeks. For our years of hitting the Plains, our tornado portfolio is rather lackluster. For someone who wants to dedicate his career to studying and telling the stories of severe weather, it’s almost ironic that I don’t have many good tornado encounters.

Now here we are in May 2024, the month we usually chase, producing the most prolific stretch of tornadoes that I can remember, and we’re not there to part. Add that to my storm of a headspace the past few weeks, and you have a perfect recipe for one burnt-out weather nut.

This Memorial Day Weekend, I’m fully unplugging. Hopefully it’ll be a good reset. I need it. Moving forward though, I now realize I’m working at an unhealthy level. Nine hours in the office being an engineer then five hours of being a content creator all in one day is not sustainable, and it has boiled over this month. The real question is now, how do I move forward? Jump into the passion full time now that it is making some money, or find a more sustainable schedule of both a career engineer and part-time content creator. I’m not sure I know the answer right at this moment, but I know DAMN well that I am not quitting on my dream. June First will persist no matter what.

Better to die trying than live a life of regret.

Talk to you all again soon :) 

Cheers,

Ethan