I am early fifties, and due to some sort of intrusive thoughts OCD-ish variant of ADHD, I have probably thought about suicide 25,000 times in the last ten years (not an overestimate). It is a several-times-per-day thing, if it’s not all day. Sometimes only an intrusive flicker, sometimes very much not. I have spent the last year or two dealing with burnout thinking about it regularly in depth; usually not for now, but for maybe ten years time when I believe it will be necessary.

I am a single man with no dependents who is struggling to work due to burnout, and I perceive that we are really not far off a world where young people will take seriously the idea that older people like me have had our time. I do not expect to be able to work for much longer because why would they let us keep our jobs or get new ones when we are taking away theirs? What can we teach them when we have built the tools that will destroy their livelihoods and wrecked the environment in which they live? Why should they listen to us at all?

Leaving a bit early may be the morally responsible thing for me to do. Understanding that living until I am dependent on care from the young is not going to be a good time when we are a despicable, despised generation, it’s an oddly liberating thought.