Anne Helen Petersen wrote a barnburner of an article about burnout over at BuzzFeed. I think a lot of us are facing exhaustion so deep that it threatens to upset the fragile balance of day-to-day life. This is my visual interpretation of Anne’s most searing quote from her article.

“I never thought the system was equitable. I knew it was winnable for only a small few. I just believed I could continue to optimize myself to become one of them.”

There’s something particularly painful about reading this quote having been a performing artist for most of my career. I often try to explain to folks that booking gigs is only partially about talent. The rest is circumstance, logistics, and luck. There’s a talent threshold you have to cross, sure, but think of it like the plywood mascot at your favorite theme park letting you know you “must be this tall to ride.” Once you’ve crossed that threshold, it doesn’t really matter how talented (or how tall you are). You only get to ride if there’s a seat for you in the car.

And we know that, we know there are a limited number of seats. But we all think we’ll be able to optimize ourselves into one of those spaces. The game is rigged, some of the seats were saved before you even showed up.

So what can we do? Make space. For each other any time we can. For ourselves if we have to.