I’m writing this after round one of snow blowing. The kind where the snow’s coming down so hard you can barely see the driveway you just cleared twenty minutes ago. My back hurts. My hands are numb. And somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a ticker running — how many more times am I going to have to do this before spring?
And that’s when it hit me: this isn’t just about the snow.
The Fatigue Has Layers Now
There’s winter storm fatigue — the physical grind of shoveling, blowing, scraping, salting, and doing it all over again because Mother Nature has a sick sense of humor. Your shoulders ache. Your driveway’s a mess. Your car’s buried. Again.
Then there’s news fatigue — the relentless scroll of chaos, corruption, and catastrophe that never stops long enough for you to catch your breath. Every morning, you wake up and check your phone like you’re bracing for impact.
And now? They’re stacking.
The snow won’t stop. The news won’t stop. And somewhere in the middle, you’re just trying to keep your head above water — or in this case, above the snowbank at the end of your driveway.
When Exhaustion Becomes The Baseline
I don’t know when it happened — maybe somewhere between the third polar vortex and the fifth breaking news alert of the day — but exhaustion stopped being a temporary state. It became the default.
You wake up tired. You go to bed tired. And in between, you’re managing a thousand small emergencies that all feel like they’re happening at once. The furnace is acting up. The news is screaming. The snow’s piling up faster than you can move it.
And the worst part? There’s no finish line.
Winter doesn’t care that you’re already running on fumes. The news cycle doesn’t pause because you need a break. The storm just keeps coming — literal and metaphorical — and you’re expected to keep pace.
The Snow Is Just The Visible Part
Here’s the thing about winter storm fatigue: it’s not really about the snow.
Sure, the physical labor is brutal. Clearing a driveway in subzero wind is nobody’s idea of a good time. But the real weight comes from the accumulation — the way it stacks on top of everything else you’re already carrying.
You’re already exhausted from:
The news cycle that never shuts up
The cost of everything going up
The sense that the world’s on fire and nobody’s steering the ship
And then the snow shows up like some kind of cosmic punchline. Oh, you thought you were tired? Here’s another foot of powder. Get the shovel.
The Mental Math Of “How Many More Times?”
There’s a specific kind of dread that comes with winter storms when you’re already burnt out. It’s not just this storm — it’s the knowledge that this is Round One. There will be a Round Two. And a Round Three. And probably a Round Four where the plow buries your mailbox again.
You start doing the mental math:
How many more weeks of winter?
How many more storms?
How many more times can I physically do this before something gives?
And the answer is always the same: I don’t know, but I guess we’re about to find out.
When Everything Feels Like Too Much At Once
The problem with fatigue — the real, bone-deep kind — is that it doesn’t stay in one lane. It bleeds.
You’re tired from the snow, so you’re shorter with your family. You’re tired from the news, so you can’t focus at work. You’re tired from everything, so the smallest inconvenience — a dead phone battery, a delayed package, a frozen pipe — feels like the last straw.
And nobody talks about this part. We talk about “self-care” and “resilience” like they’re solutions, but what do you do when the thing wearing you down isn’t a single problem you can fix? What do you do when it’s just… everything, all the time, with no off switch?
There’s No Motivational Poster For This
I could tell you to “take it one day at a time” or “focus on what you can control,” but let’s be honest — that’s not helpful when you’re standing in your driveway at 6 a.m., watching the snow undo an hour of work in ten minutes.
The truth is messier: sometimes you’re just tired. Sometimes the world is too much. Sometimes winter storm fatigue and news fatigue and life fatigue all hit at once, and the only thing you can do is acknowledge it.
You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re just human, and the load is heavy right now.
What Helps (Even A Little)
I’m not going to pretend I have answers, but here’s what I’ve noticed:
Lowering the bar. If the driveway’s half-cleared, that counts. If you only checked the news once today instead of twelve times, that’s progress.
Naming it. Saying out loud, “I’m exhausted and this is too much” doesn’t fix it, but it stops you from pretending everything’s fine when it’s clearly not.
Finding the small wins. The coffee’s hot. The furnace is working. You made it through another round of snow blowing without throwing the shovel into the street.
It’s not much. But when you’re running on empty, “not much” is sometimes all you’ve got.
The Storm Will Pass (Eventually)
Winter won’t last forever. The news cycle will eventually slow — or at least, we’ll get numb enough to tune it out for a while. The snow will melt.
But right now, in the middle of it, when you’re staring down another forecast and another headline and another reason to feel like the world’s too much — it’s okay to admit you’re tired.
Because you are. We all are.
And maybe that’s the only honest thing left to say…