My "Check Engine" Light Is On, But I'm Still Driving
An honest look at functioning on the edge of burnout, and the grace of giving yourself permission to slow down.
I have a terrible habit of treating myself like a used car with a questionable warranty. As long as it starts in the morning and gets me where I need to go, I ignore the weird rattling noise from the engine, the tire that's perpetually low on air, and especially, the glowing, ominous "check engine" light on the dashboard.
"It's probably nothing," I'll tell myself. "Just a faulty sensor. I'll get it looked at... eventually."
My brain, my body, my creative spirit—they all have their own check engine lights.
A persistent migraine.
A creative well that feels bone-dry.
A bone-deep exhaustion that no amount of coffee can fix.
For weeks, my internal dashboard has been lit up like a Christmas tree, and I've been doing my best to ignore it, flooring the gas pedal and hoping I can outrun the inevitable breakdown.
The truth is, the breakdown came last week.
It wasn't dramatic or spectacular.
It was quiet.
It was the simple, frustrating reality of time getting away from me.
That's a polite way of saying my executive function took an unscheduled vacation to a remote island with no cell service.
Deadlines felt impossible. Words wouldn't come. My to-do list mocked me. And for that reason, there was no Thursday post last week.
The "Honey Mavryck" of a yesteryear would have been consumed by guilt over this. She would have seen it as a personal failure, another piece of evidence for the prosecution in the ongoing case of You're Not Doing Enough.
Or better said, You’re Not Enough.
But the Honey of today, the one who is writing this, is trying to learn a different way.
She's learning to look at the glowing light on the dashboard not as a mark of failure, but as a neutral, vital piece of information.
It's not a judgment.
It's a diagnosis.
It's a simple message: "You are running on empty. You need to pull over and refuel."
We live in a culture that glorifies running on fumes. We're taught to hustle, to grind, to push through the pain, to ignore the warning lights until the engine seizes up completely. We see rest as a reward you have to earn, not a requirement for functioning.
What I'm slowly learning is that the most productive thing you can do when you're on the edge of burnout is to stop.
To cancel the non-essential meeting. To order takeout instead of cooking. To let the email wait until tomorrow. To give yourself permission to miss a self-imposed deadline without spiraling into shame.
These aren't acts of laziness.
They are radical, necessary acts of self-preservation.
They are the tiny life rafts that get you through the suffocating weeks.
The goal isn't to be a perfect, high-performance machine that never breaks down. The goal is to be a human who knows when she needs to pull over, pop the hood, and give her own engine the care it requires.
So, this is me, telling you my check engine light is on.
I'm not ignoring it anymore.
I'm slowing down, refueling, and giving myself the grace to be a human first and a content machine second. And I hope you give yourself that permission, too.
The work will be there when we get back on the road.
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