I sit on my porch in the warming spring air. Birdsong wafts on a gentle breeze, trailing off into the lengthening rays of sunset above me. It’s April in New England; winter has barely broken, but this evening, summer feels just around the corner. The change goes so fast once it starts. The world is becoming green and bright again. We’ll be lighting our grills soon, stacking buns and plates onto overloaded arms, celebrating graduations and holidays. Long, busy days lie ahead—like our industry, as the days warm up, so do our schedules of show after show after show. And while we eat and play and celebrate jobs well done, we can’t forget the coals in the grill that are smoldering away. They can be rekindled, sparked back into life with care and a breath to burn again, or they can go dark and cold… or worse.
Let’s talk about burnout.
We’ve seen burnout in our colleagues, maybe felt it ourselves: too much stress, too many tasks, too much of everything piling on until it’s just too much ‘too much.’ We tend to think in binaries—hot and cold, sick and well, productive and idle—but human behavior and our psyche are rarely so simple. Burnout doesn’t happen all at once. It’s usually not an explosion; it’s mostly a cooling on the way to cold. There are signs along the way, like fewer “good morning” greetings and less engagement beyond the required tasks. There’s detachment and heavier sighs, a resignation to the work rather than excitement for it. There are signs we can catch early, signs that tell us that a little change, like rearranging the coals or the seating chart, could bring in some fresh air and reignite the flame.
But sometimes you don’t plan for the change. Someone knocks over the grill, and embers fly everywhere. Danger. Fire. It’s the worst-case scenario. Now there are outbursts, conflicts, missed deadlines, and accusations. Nothing tears through a company like a negative rumor, or worse, an unfortunate truth. The fire may go out, but the burn scars remain—charred grass, melted chairs, singed hair, and broken trust—until we tend to it.
Recovering from a fire is complex. So is recovering from burnout. Healing burn scars on skin or across a landscape takes time, patience, pain, and work. Healing from burnout in a person or a company is much the same. We cannot focus only on the blackened aftermath or the cost of recovery. Those are obvious before the smoke has cleared. We also need to address the environmental hazards or institutional failures that allowed the first spark to grow into danger.
Smokey Bear didn’t say, “Only YOU can clean up the charred wreckage of a forest fire.” He calls on us to prevent fires. By addressing our shortcomings and establishing internal structures and processes that support success rather than merely fending off failure, we can build teams that collaborate more, operate more efficiently, and experience less stress. We can prevent burnout by keeping the creative fires lit and protected from wind, rain, or an errant football.
Then, we can let them cook.
This story originally appeared in the Q3 2026 issue of Exhibit City News, with the original magazine layout available here.
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