Season Finale Syndrome

when everything happens all at once.

We’ve all heard the phrase “nothing happens, and then everything happens” or a similar variant. The reason this saying is so prevalent is that, well, it’s true.

How many times have you endured months (maybe even years) of a relatively even keel, only to be caught in a period of absolute personal calamity?

Sometimes it’s all positive, sometimes sadly negative.

Usually it’s a mixture of the two.

It’s something we can all relate to, albeit in very different ways.

I know I can- and there is a trio of reasons as to why we’re delving into this topic today.

We’re in a Season Finale en masse

This was discussed more at length in my last piece, Life During Showtime, where we took a look at the 2024 election’s role as the culminating moment in an absolutely unprecedented run of national politics.

Ignore it as much as you try, it still seeps into your everyday personal and professional life.

We’re all in this together (very much tongue-in-cheek there, don’t mean to give you PTSD), and the gravity of such a momentous occasion weighs on our collective consciousness as a nation.

The Law of 4’s

This is a term I completely made up, but work with me here.

It seems as if every four years, we undergo this phenomenon where there’s a palpable paradigm shift and heightened interpersonal tensions and emotions that accompany it.

I mean, do you remember 2016?

The energy shift was definitely felt by everyone. It was an introduction to our current political and cultural climate, a departure from the lighthearted, “bro check out this Vine” ride that was the mid-10’s.

That being said, 2016 (especially that glorious summer) is widely regarded by almost all as an amazing time to be alive, which is another fascinating look into the aforementioned “collective consciousness” concept that we’ll deep dive into another day.

^ 2016 also gave us this, which (sans Lil Dicky), was iconic.

The “Law of 4’s” also backtracks well to 2012- the Mayan calendar doomsday fears, the Arab Spring, the after effects of Occupy Wall Street, Trayvon Martin, the Benghazi consulate attack, our last “normal” election for awhile.

( Feels like I’m penning a modern take on We Didn’t Start the Fire)

2008 obviously was notoriously known for the Great Financial Crisis.

I don’t think we have to dive into 2020 at all, it speaks for itself (and we’ve touched on it often).

Point being, “Season Finale Syndrome” seems to hit hardest according to this “Law of 4’s”, so it’s no surprise as 2024 comes to an emphatic crescendo, many of us feel mired in this feeling.

This leads me to my last point…

Everyone is Feeling It on a Micro Level, too

“Season Finale Syndrome” isn’t my own term.

As a creative, it only makes sense to give due credit to the work of others, and I owe this phrasing to a man my age I was having a conversation with two Thursday’s ago.

I was on a couch.

We meet once a week at the same time (he may or may not be my therapist).

The session consisted of my recounting (and celebrating, and lamenting) how 2024 has been just insane on every level, how my personal journal I keep is filled with anecdotes and tales that would’ve been highlights in other years and are now seemingly relegated to side plots in a bigger, crazier story.

There’s the culmination of arduous, months-long business deals, crazy interpersonal stories from my private life, encounters with friends and clients, social settings that get out of hand far more than they used to.

Finally, after recounting yet another tale from the show that has been 2024, I had to ask him- “what the hell is going on?”

He assured me that I wasn’t alone in this- that the very same couch I was sat on had recently been regaled with tales of divorce and breakups and job losses and criminal matters and any other crazy event you can conjure up in your brain.

Season Finale Syndrome was hitting the general population in a large swath, and while I’d never want to take pleasure in another’s woes, there was solace to be taken in the fact that I wasn’t alone in this.

Looking around my own personal friend groups and relationships, and I noticed the same trend.

Breakups, business successes and failures, tales of triumph on a grand scale, coupled with equal tales of woe.

Perhaps you the reader are feeling this as well (odds would say that you are).

Perhaps you have a rocky road in your private life, or you’ve moved on to the next level in your business or career, or hit a personal or physical milestone.

Perhaps the weight of political division and the rumbling train coming down the tracks that is the ‘24 Election is sowing discontent in your private or professional life.

Whatever it is, chances are you aren’t immune to Season Finale Syndrome this time around.

So, it begs the question- what do you do about it?

Well, I’ve devised an approach (with help) to riding out the chaos, and I wanted to share it with you guys.

Don’t Rock the Boat

Now probably isn’t the time for that crazy career change or to go flying off the grid and traverse the Amazon or something to that effect, unless you’re totally sure about it or it’s inevitable.

A trusty go-to personal routine can be your verifiable North Star in times when you’re undergoing rough seas personally and/or professionally, and it’s best to lean into it.

There will be plenty of time in the future for massive shakeups and changes in course- but think of enduring the ups and downs of season finale time they way a boxer would approach a fight.

There’s a time and a place for the full-on Mike Tyson style blitzkrieg, but try to take a page out of Floyd Mayweather’s book instead: poetic, smooth “outfighting”.

Avoid the big shots, keep your feet moving, and win your days round by round.

Maybe you’ll end up with a bag like his at the end of it, too.

“Is This Really Necessary?”

Few things in this life are better than a good night out.

There’s something about being out and about and feeling the shared energy in the air that gives us a healthy rush, a natural high.

That being said, in times like these, there’s something to be said for laying lower than usual.

There’s all sorts of crazy things going on in the streets of major cities, which obviously isn’t great. Add in the tiring weight of emotional and intellectual labor that an uncertain personal environment provides, and you’ve got a recipe for becoming burnt out at worst, and far from your sharpest at best.

Taking care of mind and body should be paramount- there’s zero negatives from building up your mental and physical armor.

There will be plenty of time to unload the clips of stored physical and psychological energy when things blow over, and you’ll be better suited for it to boot.

Operate Through the Lens of “Lore”

It’s en vogue on social media (especially Tik Tok) to refer to our personal going’s on as “lore”.

While it may seem silly on the surface to refer to our lives in a third party manner, as if we’re some character in a series or video game, I actually quite like it.

See, it fits into the realm of reframing things as a positive, which we’ve touched on in the past. The things we experience add to our own personal stories and views on the world, and make us more complete and comprehensive people as a result.

It’s the longwinded, cuter way of saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

I know, I know- I’m right there with you. Adding onto the lore can seem daunting and an unwelcome task, but when you make peace with it’s inevitability, you can romanticize it and thus embrace your own unique story.

That’s pretty cool.

---

We’ll talk again this week.

In the meantime, be good to yourselves and enjoy whatever this season finale period in life brings to you.

If nothing else, you’re building up more plot lines to take into the next season, and who knows what that can bring?

Sounds pretty exciting to me.

<3,

John Abbate

30.9.2024