The Hero Is Tired
Playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 in the Middle of a Burnout
It’s 3:19 AM. I have 41 more minutes to publish something to keep my deadline. For reasons, I had to postpone my net written piece, but I still need something here. A French woman is singing on the PlayStation Main Screen.
I’ve just finished the prologue and Act I of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a game where every year, a ghostly woman standing by a monolith paints a number for all the citizens on land to see. When she’s done, every person that age and older will die. But they don't just die; they explode into a bunch of flower petals, this being a French game after all. The next year, the number will go down.
Right now, they are at number 34.
And in this moment, controller still in hand, jaw slightly open, I feel like something inside me just expired too after watching the end of Act I. Not in a tragic way. More like: quiet, overdue, inevitable.
I’ve been stuck in my kind of purgatory lately.
Unemployed, creatively dried out, and circling the same thoughts like a character grinding XP but forgetting what the endgame even was. I keep telling myself this is just a phase—burnout, fatigue, whatever buzzword makes it feel temporary—but the truth is, I don’t know what I’m fighting for anymore. I just know I’m tired. And when Clair Obscur handed me a world where the fight was literally against fate itself? I leaned in hard.
There’s something disorienting about watching a digital character risk everything to resist a death date, while you can’t even summon the energy to update your LinkedIn. The game is dramatic. Beautiful. Turn-based, sure, but relentlessly purposeful. Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to figure out what “purpose” even looks like when you’re not anyone’s employee, leader, or protagonist.
The jobs I used to want to do don’t excite me anymore.
The communities I helped build far away are, well, far away.
I keep waiting for some voice to say, “Your mission is…” But the screen stays silent.
I think that’s why the “gommage” hit me so hard. It’s not just that the main character’s girlfriend dies in the Prologue, for crying out loud. It’s the ceremony of it. The finality. The weird, sacred beauty of knowing that this is the moment, and letting go.
And maybe that’s what I need to do—gommage a version of myself. The guy who always had a five-year plan? He’s not here anymore. The new guy doesn’t have a plan. But he has curiosity. He’s still playing. That has to count for something.
Some days, breaking the cycle just means turning on the game instead of going back to bed. It’s not a lot. But it’s not nothing.
You're right, it's not nothing. Also, maybe just talking with a friend or two will open you to new ideas. Perhaps a complete reset is due. Maybe talk through things that interest you, things that are completely different from what you've done for work over the years. It sounds like it's time to try something new, even if it's a complete change of direction.
That advice is vague, I know, but without more details of what Ernie is interested in, it has to be vague. Still, what is Ernie interested in? It might be time to explore something completely different. Your brains and experience will carry you forward, no matter what you do. It just may look like a strange path when you first set foot on it.
I hear you. Although I’m grateful to still have a job (for now) I get the whole burnout on life. The creative and driven artist in me left a long time ago and now I’m just… tired. I’ve been putting off on playing 33 mainly because of the storyline.. I don’t think my anxiety can handle it.