Burned out

What a lovely term that is...what do you think of when you hear that someone's burned out?

I think there are generally a couple trains of thought:

one - that you're like a light bulb...the light is no longer on, your spark is extinguished, and now you have to be unscrewed from the socket and thrown away (but be sure to wrap yourself in some nice container so as not to break and then rip the garbage bag, creating a huge mess as you spill out along side last night's leftover meatloaf). Regardless, you're spent.

two - someone lit a torch to you and burned the last of the crop, now you're a desolate field of black, scorched earth that once resembled a healthy, thriving crop but that crop has been harvested and what's left is the scorched remains of something that once was good.

are there more? I won't pretend to know them all.

Perhaps it's my Saskatchewan roots that eagerly entices me to believe that number two is the essence of burned out. Maybe it's because I've knelt down in one of those scorched fields, smelling the remains of what once thrived and felt saddened, until I realized that the field just to my left had also been scorched and burned out some time before...but now was green, thriving and lush - having benefited from the scorching, having more nutrients and now was something beautiful and productive once more.

I'd like to think that's what 'burned out' little ol' me is.