Mid-Spring Check-In: Are You Blooming or Burning Out?

You know that feeling around mid-April? The one where you’re standing in the gardening section of a big-box store, holding a bag of Miracle-Gro in one hand and a five-pound bag of jellybeans in the other, and you can’t remember which one you came for? That’s mid-spring.

We spent January frozen and February trying to cultivate motivation. March tricked us with a fifteen-degree (Celsius) day, and now here we are—sweating through a sweater because you refuse to do the closet change-over thing, while simultaneously eating a salad you don’t want because summer bodies are made in spring. What’s the deal with that? You can’t punish yourself into blooming. Tulips don’t do crunches.¹

So, let’s do a check-in. Not the kind where you need to gather your tax information. The kind where you sit on the edge of your unmade bed at 7:43 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, coffee going cold, and ask yourself one honest question: Am I blooming, or am I burning out?

The Bloomers (Bless Their Hearts – kind of. 😉)

Bloomers look like they’ve got it together. Not Instagram-together—that’s a filter—but real together. They sleep seven hours. They say no to the third volunteer committee. They water their plants and their own spirits.²

Here’s what blooming feels like: alignment. Your daily grind stops fighting your deeper sense of what matters. You want what you’re doing. Not every second—come on, nobody’s a saint—but most of the time, the effort feels like yours.³

If you’re blooming, you probably:

• Took a walk last week without tracking it on a watch.

• Left a party early and didn’t apologize.

• Finished a task and thought, “That was nice,” not, “What’s next?”

Blooming is quiet — it can even feel natural (because it's in alignment with Self). It doesn’t announce itself. It’s the yellow flowers that just show up on your tomato plant one morning with yellow flowers. No fanfare. Just fruit on the way.

The Burnouts (Welcome to the Club!)

Now the rest of us.

The ones who downloaded a meditation app, felt guilty for not using it, then deleted it. Who made a spring-cleaning list so long that it needs its own spring-cleaning. Who looks at a perfectly manicured lawn bursting with colourful floral gardens and thinks, “Must be nice to be able to afford a gardener.”

Burnout isn’t just tired. Tired goes away after a weekend of binging Frasier and ordering in comfort food (poutine, anyone?). Burnout is when your alarm goes off and you feel a modicum of disappointment at having to face another day. A little dark, I know. I apologize — but sometimes the most honest truths are the ones that hurt a little when you admit and face them.⁴

You know you’re burning out when:

• You answer, “How are you?” with “Busy!” to make an excuse for being absent from life.

• You cancel plans because the thought of getting out of your pyjamas is exhausting.

• You’ve had three separate crying jags this week, and one of them was over a dog food commercial.

Here’s the part that stings: sometimes, burnout is what happens when you chase things your deeper self doesn't and never did want.⁵ The promotion. The perfectly curated home. The lawn that looks like a putting green. You run and run, and then one day you realize you’re running away from yourself, not toward anything.

The Mid-Spring Pivot

So, what do we do? We’re too far in to start over like January, and too close to summer to give up.

First, stop comparing your insides to everyone else’s outsides. That neighbour with the immaculate flower beds? Her hydrangeas are fake. I’m not saying that’s true, but I’m also not saying it’s false. The point is: you don’t know. Comparison is the thief of joy, but also the thief of sleep, and the thief of the last slice of pizza.⁶

Second, redefine “blooming.” It’s not achievement. It’s ease. When was the last time you did something and it felt easy? Not simple—easy. That’s your compass. Follow that. Even if it’s just for fifteen minutes. Even if “easy” today means lying on the floor with your feet up the wall while listening to a 2007 pop song.⁷

Third—laugh at yourself. You’re a mess. I’m a mess. The whole species is a mess. We forgot how to make fire and invented spreadsheet macros instead. Of course we’re burning out. But a mess that can laugh is a mess that can change.

Your Two-Question Check-In

Put down your phone. Or don’t. But think about these:

1. What have I done this spring that made me feel more like me?  Not productive. Not impressive. Me. (If the answer is “nothing,” that’s your data. Don’t panic. Just notice.)

2. What am I doing that feels like running up a down escalator? Name it. That thing you keep doing that doesn’t work, that you keep doing anyway, because you’re afraid to stop. That’s the kindling. That’s what you let go of first.

The Bottom Line

You don’t have to be blooming. Mid-spring is allowed to be awkward. The lilacs aren’t out yet. The tomatoes are still leggy seedlings on a windowsill. But if you’re burning out—really burning, not just tired—then do one small, weird, unproductive thing today. Put a fake mustache on the bathroom mirror. Call your cousin and just breathe into the phone for ten seconds. Eat the jellybeans. Forget the Miracle-Gro.

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Endnotes

¹ The “tulips don’t do crunches” observation is original to this blog, but the rhythm owes a debt to Jerry Seinfeld’s Is This Anything? (Simon & Schuster, 2020) and his insistence that human logic fails hilariously when applied to nature.

² On alignment and authentic power: Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 78-82. The watering metaphor is my own.

³ Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, p. 112-115. The distinction between external achievement and internal resonance.

⁴ The “disappointment you didn’t die in your sleep” is a known dark-humor trope, but its compassionate use here is inspired by Erma Bombeck’s The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank (McGraw-Hill, 1976), where she proved that laughing at despair is a survival skill.

⁵ Zukav again, The Seat of the Soul, chapter 5. Burnout as misalignment.

⁶ The “comparison is the thief of joy” is often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. The pizza amendment is mine.

⁷ Feet-up-the-wall pose (Viparita Karani) shown to reduce cortisol. Harvard Medical School, “Relaxation Techniques,” 2019. The 2007 pop song is clinically optional.

⁸ Bombeck, Erma. All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room (HarperCollins, 1995), final chapter.