At My Most Burned-Out in 35 Years

[ReshiIRE]

OK, so I am a younger woman and not married, and I have not GM'd very long, so I hope I am not speaking out of turn.

But none of this strikes me as a problem relating to being a Game master. Instead, I think it's a problem relating to how others are treating you, and how much you are pushing yourself to do things for others, to the point of what some may consider to be 'lighting yourself on fire to keep others warm.'

In particular, that wedding day sounds like something awful and exhausting. Having to set up the wedding, run an event, drive four hours back and do another event must have destroyed your sleep and tired you out something fierce. Anyone would need a long break after that. I hope you are being taken care of physically.

As well as that, I agree with others that what your wife said to you is just not OK. I do not want to do psycho analyst or the r/relationship tier going-way-too-far advice, but you should not be put under that sort of pressure for a game you run for the enjoyment of everyone, not just the other players. It is something to be discussed and dealt with. While you should listen where you can, make it clear how uncomfortable and upset you are at such a thing being said.

I hope your kindness, dedication and the fact you went way, way beyond any normal expectations is being appreciated by your friends who were recently married and your grieving friend. ... not going to lie, it does sound like something I'd do, were I not sure my friends would talk me out of it and refuse to let me entertain such a notion. To be clear, that's not a judgement on any of the friends - as long as they are recognising how exhausting you are and giving visible appreciation and support for you. Though now adays I would also recognise this as harming myself for others in a way that is going to cause myself problems later down the line and play upon my mental health. It can be an unhealthy thing even though your intentions are pure and you want to do good things for others. It's important to avoid that and to recognies what your limits are.

I think you need rest, and to think about things, and as others have said, have others take on some of the work aspects of running games for you to give yourself more space and prevent burnout. I'm guessing a lot of your friends are near enough your age, so it should be doable.

Please take care. I've read a lot of your posts before and with this recent one, a lot of them make more sense, in terms of how stressed you are. Beyond rest, it might be good to consider talking some of these issues over with friends and thinking about mental health, and drilling down why you do some things. Going up and beyond for friendship shows your depth of care but I hope you do not do that all the time, to the point of exhaustion. If you are, it would be a good idea to think about why and understand yourself more, to prevent collapse.

EDIT: oh... I wrote this not reading about the passing of your father (may he rest in peace), your job worries and the medication you are taking.

I would strongly recommend considering therapy if you can acquire it and feel comfortable, even if it is for a short while. Proper therapy, even if it requires you to meet a few psychologists and to try different methods. That is quite a lot to cope with. Adding burnout from essentially doing a second job to the point of pushing yourself to exhaustion - particularly when you feel you must do this to avoid emotional consequences - is going to play upon you intently, and it may require proper professional support to help you cope and to work out the next few steps.

I think in general the advice here has been good (much, much better than you would usually get online) but I think at this stage you should primarily consider offline and professional advice. We are strangers online often from different cultural contexts and without knowledge of your whole life, and that can lead to inappropriate advice.

Do take care!

 

[Retreater]

Thanks everyone for the support.
I've already reached out to a player in one of the groups, and he's offered to pick up the GMing duties for the time being. While it's not the most exhausting of my groups, every bit helps.
I plan to discuss all of this with my therapist at our next session - which is still a couple weeks out.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Just chiming in with love and support, I hope things get better, and I also want to second the general sentiment that yeah, there's no sense in running games that are ultimately harming you-- you deserve to feel appreciated when you run games, and to feel like they're a fun part of your life, rather than something you have to do for others.

 

[TiQuinn]

I feel almost too exhausted to write this post.

Over two years of two weekly games in different systems with only the occasional missed session.
Last weekend, I ran a bonus marathon session for around 8 hours (for different players in another system).
This weekend, I ran a game for a drunken wedding party that lasted until midnight (for yet different players in yet another different system) - turned around, drove 4 hours, and ran another 4 hour game.
In the regular game, people don't pay attention to their turns, don't know their character abilities, argue with me about their character abilities (that they don't know), have a "joke journal" instead of keeping pertinent adventure details.

Yesterday, I rushed home from the wedding party game. Got home just in time to level up 5 characters for the players, printed out 30 pages of character sheets, organized the table, and had about 1 hour to lay down and feel hopeless that I had nothing to run for the group. (My previous planned encounters had been made worthless when the group decided to flee the adventure the previous session.) No suitable pre-made adventures were available, because I'm running a dead system notorious for bad adventures.

Thankfully, we are taking off next Sunday for Mother's Day. I'm about to collapse - not kidding. I don't want to stop running the games and kill the groups. Also, if I take time off, that will be the same as killing the groups. In at least one of the groups - I'm the only person willing to DM. My wife - who is a player - literally got mad at me when I told her I was tired. ("I guess just tell everyone you don't want to DM anymore and that we're not going to play.")

I don't know why I'm posting this. I guess to vent? Maybe to help organize my thoughts about how to try to recover from this?

Wow, lot to unpack here.

1) If a game ends, it ends. So what. You’ve got other stuff in your life that you care about? Other pursuits? Other obligations? Surely gaming doesn’t surpass all of them.

2) I’d keel over if I played, let alone ran as DM, an 8 hour game. I’m a middle aged dude, not a teenager. It’s okay to be old and have limits.

3) Sorry that your wife isn’t more supportive but let me state - she isn’t being supportive.

4) Drunkeness and TTRPGs don’t mix well in my experience. If you want to play a game, play a game. If you want to kick back and have drinks, do that. Not both.

5) I’m part of a group that routinely takes breaks in the summer and winter because of holidays and vacations. We don’t even try to plan around it. We just take 3 months off and pick up where we left off. It can be done and it can be done without the burden of guilt. If that guilt is being put on you by others, you might want to look for someone else for that game. It’s important to set boundaries.