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Alright, let’s talk about it. “Fmybrainsout.” No, it’s not some new cryptocurrency or a trendy diet that promises you’ll shed pounds by sheer mental exertion. Though, if it were, I reckon half the folks I know would sign right up, eyes glazed over, already half-dead from the effort. What we’re really talking about here, in plain language, is that feeling. You know the one. The one where your head feels like a kettle that’s been on the boil too long, steam escaping from every earhole, and the whistle’s just a continuous, high-pitched scream. It’s not just tired. Tired, you can sleep off. This is a deeper kind of weariness, a mental exhaustion so profound it starts to feel like your actual grey matter is trying to stage a prison break, limb by limb, right out of your skull. And honestly, it feels like it’s becoming the national pastime for anyone with a pulse and a mobile phone.
I’ve been watching this game for over two decades now, seen more deadlines than I care to count, more “urgent” emails than there are stars in the sky, and more bright young things burn out before they hit thirty than you’d believe. Used to be, you clocked off, the office door shut, and that was that. You went home, had your tea, maybe watched a bit of telly, and the world outside the front door pretty much stayed there. Now? Forget about it. Your phone’s chirping, your laptop’s practically begging for attention on the kitchen table, and some idiot from accounts is emailing you about a spreadsheet at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. It’s like the entire world decided to stick a constant IV drip of anxiety directly into our collective consciousness. No wonder folks feel like their brains are being slowly siphoned away, atom by atom, into the ether.
It’s this ceaseless expectation, isn’t it? This notion that we always have to be on. Always reachable. Always productive. Always learning, always growing, always optimising. You hear that word enough, “optimise,” and you just want to take a spanner to the whole bloody machine. Optimise your sleep, optimise your diet, optimise your social life, for Christ’s sake, just breathe. My mate Geoff, lives down in Wollongong, used to be a chippy, solid as a rock. Now he’s taken to staring blankly at the telly for hours, just scrolling his phone, muttering about “side hustles” and “personal branding.” He looks knackered, proper done in. And for what? So he can try to flog dodgy online courses to people who are just as tired as he is? It’s a vicious circle, this modern life, a proper dog’s dinner if you ask me. We’re all running on fumes, chasing some ever-receding horizon, convinced that if we just push a bit harder, one more hour, one more project, then everything will magically fall into place. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t. It just gets worse.
The Myth of the Always-On maverick
You see them, plastered all over the internet, those grinning faces claiming they wake at 4 AM, meditate for an hour, run a marathon, close a million-dollar deal, and still have time to hand-rear endangered pandas before lunch. Bollocks, the lot of it. Absolute unadulterated bollocks. What they’re not showing you is the bags under their eyes, the nervous twitch, the fact they’re probably slamming down three litres of coffee and existing on a diet of sheer delusion and protein bars. This whole cult of the “always-on maverick” is killing us. It’s setting an impossible standard, making ordinary, decent people feel like failures for simply needing to, you know, rest.
I remember a young fella who started in the newsroom a few years back. Sharp as a tack, full of beans, wanted to change the world, write the next big story. Within six months, he was barely functioning. He’d be there at 6 AM, leave at midnight, answering emails in the pub, checking sources under the table at dinner. His eyes started to look like burnt holes in a blanket. One morning, he just didn’t show up. Called in later, voice like sandpaper, said he just… couldn’t. His brain, he said, felt like it had been scooped out with a melon baller. He wasn’t wrong. He was suffering from “fmybrainsout” in its purest form. This isn’t just about being stressed, mind you. Stress is a response to pressure. This is what happens when the pressure never lets up, when it becomes the air you breathe, the food you eat, the dreams you have. It grinds you down until there’s nothing left but dust.
Is “fmybrainsout” a new thing, or just a new name for old problems?
Fair question. People have always worked hard, always felt pressure. My grandad, he worked down the pits in South Wales. Hard graft, dangerous stuff. He knew what exhaustion felt like. But there was a boundary. When the shift ended, it ended. You didn’t take the coal face home with you in your pocket. You didn’t have a manager texting you about a dropped seam at 11 PM. This constant connectivity, that’s the real kicker here. That’s what’s making “fmybrainsout” feel less like an occasional bad week and more like a permanent state of being for a good many folks. It’s the blurring of lines. It’s the fact that your employer, your clients, your social media feed, they’re all living in your pocket, chirping away, demanding your attention 24/7. That’s new, and it’s a killer.
The Great Digital Drain
Think about it. Every notification, every email subject line, every headline you scroll past, every influencer’s perfectly curated life that pops up on your feed – it’s a tiny little tax on your brain. A micro-transaction of mental energy. You might not feel it with one, or ten, or even fifty. But when it’s hundreds, thousands of these little demands, day in, day out, well, your brain’s processing unit starts to sputter. It’s like trying to run a supercomputer on a hamster wheel. It just ain’t gonna work, is it?
I’m no Luddite, understand. I run a newspaper, for crying out loud. We use computers, we’re online. But I’ve watched, with a grim sort of fascination, how these tools that were supposed to make our lives easier have somehow conspired to make them infinitely more complicated and exhausting. What’s interesting is how many people have fallen for the trap hook, line and sinker. They carry their digital leash everywhere, checking it compulsively, like it’s some sort of digital pacifier. And then they wonder why they can’t focus for longer than a goldfish, why they feel perpetually wired and tired all at once.
How do you even know if you’re heading for a proper “fmybrainsout” moment?
It’s not hard to spot, if you’re honest with yourself. Are you snapping at people over nothing? Do little things feel like insurmountable mountains? Are you losing your train of thought in the middle of a sentence? Are you staring at a screen for hours but not really taking anything in? Can’t seem to switch off, even when you’re trying to relax? Feeling a dull ache behind your eyes, or like your head’s stuffed with cotton wool? If you’re nodding along to more than a couple of those, then congratulations, you’re probably already halfway there. It’s not a medical diagnosis, obviously, but it’s a pretty good sign your mental reserves are running on empty. And ignoring it is like driving on fumes hoping you’ll find a petrol station before the engine seizes. You might, but it’s a stupid gamble.
The Perpetual performance Anxiety
Another big part of this “fmybrainsout” problem, I reckon, is the sheer pressure to perform. Not just at work, but in life. We’re all expected to be living our “best lives” now, aren’t we? Travelling the world, baking artisan bread, mastering a foreign language, hitting the gym five times a week, building an empire from our spare room, all while looking effortlessly fabulous. It’s a load of rubbish, really. Most people I know are just trying to get through the week without setting fire to their dinner or yelling at the cat.
This social media highlight reel culture is a massive contributor. Everyone’s showing their wins, their perfectly filtered moments of joy, their seemingly limitless energy. It’s enough to make you feel like a lazy lump of nothing, even if you’ve just put in a solid twelve-hour shift and managed to get the kids fed and bathed without incident. It breeds this low-level, constant anxiety that you’re not doing enough, not being enough. And that feeling, that gnawing sense of inadequacy, that’ll fry your brain faster than a dodgy chip shop deep fat fryer.
What’s the actual point of all this “hustle” anyway?
Good question. It often feels like we’re on a treadmill, running faster and faster, but not actually getting anywhere. For some, it’s about money, sure. But for a lot of folks, it’s something else. It’s about this ingrained belief that if you’re not constantly moving, constantly producing, constantly “grinding,” you’re somehow failing. It’s a cultural sickness, this idea that idleness is a sin and rest is for the weak. And it means we’re always striving for the next thing, never really present, never really content. Always looking over our shoulder, afraid we’re falling behind. The point, if there is one, seems to be to keep us all busy enough that we don’t have time to actually think about whether any of this makes a blind bit of sense.
A Moment of Silence (If You Can Manage It)
So, what’s the answer to this widespread brain-drain? You want a neat little list of five steps to mental nirvana? Forget it. Life ain’t that simple, and I ain’t selling snake oil. But after all these years, I’ve picked up a few things, seen what works for some, what makes others just laugh in your face.
First off, and this might sound utterly mad in 2025, but try shutting the bloody phone off. Not just silent. Off. For an hour. For an evening. Hell, for a whole Saturday if you’re feeling brave. Go for a walk without it. Leave it in another room when you’re eating. You’ll feel a phantom vibration in your pocket for a bit, like your brain’s still expecting the next hit, but it passes. Swear to God, it passes. My niece, bless her cotton socks, lives in a small town down in Worcestershire, lovely girl. She started leaving her phone in a drawer after 8 PM. Said it felt like a limb was missing for a week, but now, she actually reads books again. Proper paper ones. Imagine that.
Second, learn to say no. A simple two-letter word, often harder to spit out than a mouthful of gravel. But it’s your best defence against the relentless tide of demands. Your boss wants you to take on another project when you’re already swamped? “No, can’t do it properly right now.” Your mate wants you to join yet another WhatsApp group for their new hobby? “No thanks, got enough notifications as it is.” You don’t need a long explanation, you don’t need to apologise like you just committed a crime. Just “no.” The world won’t end. Trust me, I’ve seen enough “crises” come and go to know that very little is truly as urgent as people make it out to be.
Is it really okay to just… do nothing sometimes?
Aye, it’s not just okay, it’s bloody essential. Your brain isn’t a machine that can just run indefinitely. It needs downtime. It needs moments where it’s not processing, not problem-solving, not consuming information. Call it a mental detox. Call it staring at the wall. Call it whatever you want, but carve out time where you’re not doing anything productive. Just existing. My old man, he was a Newcastle lad, knew how to take a proper break. He’d sit in his armchair, cup of tea, just watching the pigeons on the roof. Not thinking, not worrying, just… being. We’ve forgotten how to do that, haven’t we? We feel guilty if we’re not always “on.” But that quiet time, that’s when your brain actually gets a chance to tidy itself up, to file away the day’s chaos, to recharge. It’s not lazy, it’s maintenance. And without it, you’re just inviting the “fmybrainsout” feeling to settle in for the long haul.
It’s not about grand gestures. It’s about small, consistent acts of self-preservation. It’s about pushing back, just a little, against the constant hum of the digital world and the insane expectations it breeds. It’s about remembering that your brain, the one that feels like it’s being slowly deep-fried, is the only one you’ve got. And if you let it get completely frazzled, well, then you’re truly up the creek without a paddle, aren’t you? So, take a breath. Tell someone to wait. And for God’s sake, give your brain a break. It’ll thank you for it, even if you don’t feel it immediately.
