You can suffer from marriage burnout and parent burnout and pandemic burnout partly because, although burnout is supposed to be mainly about working too much, people now talk about all sorts of things that aren’t work as if they were: you have to work on your marriage, work in your garden, work out, work harder raising your kids, work on your relationship with God (‘Are You at Risk for Christian Burnout?’ One Web site asks. You’ll know you are if you’re driving yourself too hard to become an ‘an excellent Christian.’) Even getting a massage is ‘bodywork’.

Jill Lepore, It’s Just Too Much, The New Yorker, 5/24/21