(sorry for the audio - Gomer's recording gear was left at Church when he did EKSB during his lunchbreak, which seems to fit the theme nicely)

"The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash. (Kafka, quoted by Byung-Chul Han in his _The Nation _piece.)

Gomer contemplated quitting because he's doing a hundred things and realized that so is Luke with his Notre Dame executive degree. It's a bit much, but we are doing this to ourselves. Over and over again. My dad worked a fulltime job, volunteered with the Knights of Columbus, and was a dad. He didn't write a blog or "create content" for his tribe. He was a dad when he wasn't a credit department supervisor for Texaco's refinery division.

Side hustle culture, burnout culture, FIRE aftermath, etc. are all telling Gomer one thing: "You're burning out and you're doing this to yourself."

Sponsored By:

• BetterHelp.com: Great online counseling made easy!
• OSV Challenge: The OSV Challenge is a multi-round entrepreneurial competition designed to accelerate unique project ideas in any stage from Catholics whose faith motivates them to make a difference. Seeking people with ideas ready to impact the Church that deserve to be nurtured, cultivated and taken to new heights.
• Athletic Greens: Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5

Support Catching Foxes

Links:

• The Tiredness Virus | The Nation — In one of his aphorisms he writes: “The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master’s whiplash.” This permanent self-flagellation makes us tired and, ultimately, depressed. In a certain respect, neoliberalism is based on self-flagellation.
• The Burnout Society: Han, Byung-Chul: 9780804795098: Amazon.com: Books — Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.
• The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present - Kindle edition by Han, Byung-Chul, Steuer, Daniel. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. — Untrammelled neoliberalism and the inexorable force of production have produced a 21st century crisis of community: a narcissistic cult of authenticity and mass turning-inward are among the pathologies engendered by it. We are individuals afloat in an atomised society, where the loss of the symbolic structures inherent in ritual behaviour has led to overdependence on the contingent to steer identity.