#309: This episode discusses Brooklyn Nine-Nine and a Vice article on burnout and resilience by Shayla Love, but it’s mostly Link, Lara, and Josué processing burnout and how they’ve been coping during the pandemic.

Josué Cardona 0:11
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona. I’m joined by Link Keller

Link Keller 0:20
Hello

Josué Cardona 0:22
and Lara Taylor.

Lara Taylor 0:23
Hey there.

Josué Cardona 0:25
Anybody here burnt out?

Link Keller 0:28
Pick me. It’s me. I’m I am.

Josué Cardona 0:31
You burnt out? I’m pretty burnt out.

Lara Taylor 0:35
I’m less burnt out than I was six months ago.

Josué Cardona 0:39
While I’m happy for you.

Lara Taylor 0:41
I’m still exhausted

Josué Cardona 0:45
I, I burnt out harder than I think I ever have. Recently, and but it’s like, it’s obviously it’s obviously the accumulation of it. Right? Like, stuff, stuff. Filled the cup. And it way too much too many things came in at once.

Lara Taylor 1:11
It was overflowing.

Josué Cardona 1:13
It was too much it spilled over

Lara Taylor 1:15
like someone shook up the soda. And it was into your cup.

Josué Cardona 1:19
Yeah, yeah. It was not. It was surprising. Almost like how, how hard I fell. How burnt out I was. Am I’m still I’m still it. I think I think it hit people in different ways at different times. But um, yeah, and I mean, that kind of just affects everything. Which is the kind of try to keep going and um, and so link you want it you chose this this this uplifting, joyful topic today. Why exactly?

Link Keller 1:58
Well so um, we we take turns picking topics on GT radio, there’s three of us we take turns is rotating. That gives you a couple of weeks to plan your next topic of choice. And, you know, sometimes we keep it loosey goosey and go for, you know, current events and sometimes returning to old favorites. But generally speaking, we’re trying to do you know, the Geek Therapy method, we’re talking about media we care about and celebrating how it helps us better understand ourselves and other people. And to be entirely honest, I have not felt celebratory in a long time. And every time it has been my turn to pick a topic, I have struggled to pick something. Because I’ll have ideas, you know, as I’m scrolling through Twitter, or watching Tik toks, or whatever, I see things all the time media that I have a strong emotional response to and I want to talk about a be something interesting to talk about it, but it is frequently upsetting. rage inducing, extremely depressing. And that is that’s not the vibe, that’s not the vibe that we’re going for here. Not, you know, not that we’re always 100% positivity, because that can be pretty toxic, too. But that’s not that’s not what I want to bring. But it has been really hard lately, I feel. not lately, this past two years, honestly, I was having, you know, a series of unfortunate events before COVID happened. So I never really got opportunity to sit down and reflect and process all of the series of shit that was happening. And then COVID And individually there, there have been, you know, moments where I’ve been okay, and I’ve felt fine. But overwhelmingly, it has been awful, and traumatizing. And I feel like I’ve not gotten the chance to I keep seeing these these jokes on on Twitter people posting memes about like, Haha, you know, we’re three months away from 2022. And I’m still processing March 2020. And it’s like, Haha, a joke, but I’m like, I feel that way sometimes. Like, when it’s like, oh, yeah, that was, you know, a year and six months ago that we went into our first lockdown. And at the time it was, you know, scary and we didn’t know what to expect and we didn’t know how long it would last and now Many things have changed but many things are still the same. We don’t know how long it’s gonna last. There’s so much uncertainty about it. It’s awful. And I’m, I am burnt out, I I’m burnt out, I’m I’m exhausted. And I tried to come up with another idea for a topic this week. But I think I was speaking with Josué and had the realization that I think that we just we need to talk about it avoiding it isn’t going to make it any easier for me. So yeah. I’m burned the fuck out

Josué Cardona 5:37
Remember two weeks ago when I had an idea, and then when we showed up, I was like, Yeah, I’m just angry. And I wanted to talk about how angry I am. And I think we better not record because I’m angry about my job. I’m angry about the world. And I don’t think I don’t think this is going to end up as something that I would, I would, uh, would be beneficial to anybody. It was. And so we didn’t even record that night. Um, one thing, one thing you just said, makes me I hadn’t thought about. I hadn’t thought about how hard it is to be optimistic right now. And, like, we just did the 10th anniversary a couple months ago. And there was like, momentum. And I’ve been thinking about, like, why it was so hard to keep celebrating and like, keep moving forward. And I think I think this, this is probably a big part of it. I think it’s, it’s a combination of things, right? I have media examples that I’ll bring up. I will start with Brooklyn, nine, nine. Y’all remember when we talked about Brooklyn nine, nine last year. And it was like, I wonder how they’re going to come back? What are they going to do? Brooklyn nine, nine came back. And it’s weird

Link Keller 7:07
that seems so fucking long ago.

Josué Cardona 7:09
It was a long time ago. My mind is back. And it is so weird. I remember saying in light of George Floyd’s murder, there’s no way like, what are they gonna do? Are they just gonna come back and just pretend like nothing happened? Are they going to come back and like all quit and be social workers.

Link Keller 7:27
I still I still wish. If I could if I could do a genie wish is Undo Brooklyn nine nine from being a show about cops to being a show about post office workers. You can have the same characters, nearly the same situations. Perfect. You can even use a lot of the same sets like it’s right there. And it’s not cops.

Josué Cardona 7:51
So So Have either of you seen the new then the new season?

Lara Taylor 7:56
I haven’t watched any brooklyn nine nine.

Josué Cardona 7:57
So so so. So the show so

Lara Taylor 8:00
so I don’t have to be disappointed.

Josué Cardona 8:02
No, but this is just an example of how weird it is. Right? Because it’s pretending it’s trying to be what it was before. But also it can’t be. And so in the first episode, Rosa quits, Rosa, Rosa is no longer a cop. And they’re definitely moving towards way more roadtrip episodes and private life stuff. They’re moving away from that and the police, it’s in the in the police officers themselves. They’re like, they’re trying to run a program to you know, reform police policing throughout the city. But they, they’re still cops, and they’re still policing. And there’s

Link Keller 8:43
and it’s still a comedy show. So like trying to grapple with those ideas and be funny??

Josué Cardona 8:49
There was one episode where they had a moment where like it, they have a speech where they’re like speaking against police brutality, and then they had to follow it up with a joke because it’s a sitcom. And it feels like this, the show cannot survive after the season, because it just feels too weird. You kno...