Patrick Freyne

But I think people forget sometimes that they're not just their job and they're not just the thing they do.

And actually, the other thing, when I wrote about it six months later, the thing that occurred to me is that there's this constant...

focus on excelling at everything like if you flick through social media everyone is trying to be the best at everything and all we can ever be by definition most of the time is average like you know we're all particularly good at certain things yeah but then the rest of the time average is good enough and you shouldn't be people shouldn't be beating themselves up about it and i think i had been beating myself up a bit about not not excelling at all times um

And when I did that piece, I did an essay for the Irish Times on the subject six months after I'd experienced the burnout.

I got loads of responses from people who were burnt out or on the edge of burning out.

And that's what they needed to hear.

They needed to hear somebody say, you don't have to be brilliant all the time.

And there's a culture now of...

And all the anxiety now coming in from AI is adding to that.

Now we have to be better than a machine.

And all that stuff is very, I think, bad for people.

Sometimes it's good enough to be good enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're right.

It is.

There's a cultural moment going on there that is driving people to it.

You've also talked about you and Anna don't have children and you've talked about, I know it's pressure, the right word is judgment, the right word around that.

So I wrote an essay about it in my first book, OK, Let's Do Your Stupid Idea, which is a few years ago now.

And Anne actually wrote about it really beautifully in her first adult novel, our song last year.