If You’re Happy but You’re Burned Out, Clap Your Hands

I’ve been wanting to write an article for a while about burnout. The irony isn’t lost on me that it’s taken me over a month to get thoughts to screen because I’ve been “too busy.” 

The first time the thought for the article crossed my mind I was at home, having taken Good Friday, April 18, off after a very busy week of work and two full days of being in a training program. I’d also been dealing with severe insomnia, which I attributed to peri-menopausal weirdness but realize in hindsight was exacerbated by stress and burnout. I’d hoped to spend that Friday doing something fun or spending time on one or more of my hobbies, but because I was so exhausted, I spent the day napping on the couch while I waited for the HVAC guy to show up to install a part and do the biannual check-up since that was the only free time I’d had all month. 

I was too burned out to write an article about burnout.

I’ve never been in a situation before, at least with work, where I’ve been mostly happy and enjoying what I do but at the same time suffering severe burnout. I really like my job. No, I really do. Dare I say I even love it, and I hate the American sentiment of feeling like we have to “love” our jobs for them to be worthwhile.

But, damn it’s been busy, and when you’re not great at setting boundaries or letting authenticity peek out from behind the professional facade, it becomes a vicious cycle of doing more work and setting up other people and the organization to come to expect more work done more quickly and more expertly. Small mistakes would send me spiraling. Even if you like it in general, it wears you down. When you like it, it’s harder to admit when it’s wearing you down. 

Meanwhile, I’m dealing with a long-term, nagging foot injury that makes it difficult to do physical things I love to do like taekwondo. Other than my non-negotiable morning walks, I haven’t been as active as I used to be thanks to the injury and days when the insomnia made me too sickly tired to want to do anything. I am in a season where I feel very disconnected with taekwondo, and I’m not sure when I’m going to deepen that bond again.

A bunch of other shit has been happening too these past three months, but no really, I’ve been fine the whole time, honest:
-My fridge died so I had to go buy a new one
-My stove control panel has been on the fritz, which is mostly fixed but is one storm-induced power blip away from acting weird again
-I need to get insulation put into part of my attic but have been too tired and busy and preoccupied to start taking care of it until very recently
-One close family member is going through a long-term, emotionally draining crisis
-I watched my dad spend an increasing amount of time and energy caring for his parents, who lived ten hours away from him, when they started declining rapidly
-I finalized my estate plan and no one cared enough to congratulate me or say “good job” (no one ever does when you’re the responsible one who just does the adulting without hiccups)
-I had three medical procedures in two days that cost me thousands of dollars, and I didn’t feel like I could tell close family members about one of them because they were so preoccupied with other things. I didn’t want to worry them about a biopsy to see whether I had cancer (I don’t) although I really wanted to tell someone about it. This happened the same week I finalized my estate planning, and after I complained about going through all that crap with no acknowledgement and no one to talk to about it, my boyfriend was like, “What, do you want a cookie or something?” and I was like, “As a matter of fact, I do,” so he bought me a four-pack of Crumbl cookies.
-My grandparents died within a day of each other at the end of April

My mind was so frazzled and frayed that when I got the news my grandpa died, my first reaction was to prove I was fine. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” I kept saying when my boyfriend hugged me after we got the news. I sent a manic text to my boss saying that I was fine and would be at a work event the next day. Wisely, she told me to slow down and step away. I stayed home the next day and was able to say good-bye to my grandma over FaceTime but still felt like I needed to take care of EVERYTHING the two days I worked before I took time off to travel for their funeral. 

Still, I thought I was fine even though my sleep was shit, and I was racing at all cylinders to get all the things done that I thought I had to do. The day before I was taking my bereavement days I had HAD IT with the insomnia. Thankfully, my company (the one that’s working me really hard, ha ha) has a great employee assistance program, and I got set up with a counseling session that night, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

The next morning, my first day of bereavement, I woke up extra early AGAIN from the insomnia. I started journaling and word-vomiting everything I was feeling. Usually that makes me feel better, but I ended up feeling worse. When I started thinking about how I should probably hose off my porch in anticipation of friends who were traveling for my grandparents’ funeral and were going to use my home as a pit stop, I burst into tears over my Cheerios.

As I sobbed, I started listing off all the things to my boyfriend I felt terrible about like how I couldn’t sleep and how it seemed like no one at work understood that I’d lost not only one but two people just because they died within a day of each other (people at work understood) and how I never have time to do any of my hobbies and how if I never have time to write and publish books and make more money I’ll never be able to buy us a bigger house because these days I can’t afford a nice house on my nice salary. I’m not sure where that last one came from, but it’s been sitting in the dark recesses of my mind, I guess.

He listened attentively and then got us some sausage rolls at the donut shop.

My counselor suggested I make time to “reset.” She also put two other words into my mind: resentment and relief. Would I feel resentment if I said yes to something? Would I feel relief if I said no?

When we got back from our out-of-town funeral trip, I had a cold bad enough to make me stay home from a work event and taekwondo for the next two weeks.

I was relieved to have an excuse to step back from life for a little while. What I learned, though, was that I don’t need to wait for a deus ex machina to force me to slow down. That’s what happened with my knee injury, which in the long run I’m glad happened, but it was a very rude and difficult awakening. I don’t have to justify taking a step back.

Last week I had a frank conversation with my boss about burnout. She said she was waiting for me to admit it, and we talked about things we could do to lighten my load. It was a different feeling than the last time I admitted to a boss I was burned out. At that time I hated my job and wanted so badly to leave. I was absolutely miserable.

I’m not miserable, I’m just tired. I don’t want to leave. I just want to rest. Ten years ago around this time I wrote a post about burnout with the apt lines: “Sometimes what you love can burn you. The trick is recognizing when you need to step away from the deceptive warmth of the flame and rest in the cool quiet darkness for a while.”

And rest was the first order of business. My boss suggested I take the next two days off, and I did. My overly active mind started trying to fill in the blanks of what I could do with my time like making lunch reservations at a nice restaurant. No, I told myself, I’m just going to exist for the next few days. 

And I rested. I did gentle exercise like walking and yoga, and I spent tons of time reading. I’d been spending very little time on social media since the beginning of April, so that’s thankfully not a time/energy siphon anymore.

Beating burnout starts with me and the expectations I put on myself. I don’t have to be all the things to everybody and do all the things all the time. The world won’t fall apart if I’m not perfect. “No” is a complete sentence. My counselor’s barometer of resentment and relief has been spot on. 

I didn’t let myself get fooled that a four day weekend would cure me of what has been a six month and counting cycle of increasing busyness and juggling demands. It’s practice for how to manage life in the long-term. I put things on my to-do list, but I try not to feel bad if I don’t get to cross them off right away. I’m seeing where I can let things go or let things wait. I’m giving myself more choices for how to spend my time and not judging myself for what I decide to do. It’s like when those scammy solar panel guys called a few weeks ago offering to do an energy audit of my house, but this time it’s a legit energy audit of my mind, body, and spirit. 

I’ve been sleeping quite well for the last two weeks. Part of it might be because medication I was put on to re-balance my hormones is probably starting to kick in, but I’m not letting life demands off the hook. The work stress was disrupting my sleep too, as was the stress about all the things happening in general in my life. I need a whole life re-balance, not just one for my estrogen levels. 

My coworkers and I have been in a coaching program and have had practice sessions with each other. When I talked to a coworker about work and burnout, he used the phrase “joy and energy.” Yes, I want to bring joy and energy wherever I show up, and I want to derive joy and energy from elements of my life like work and home and hobbies.

I haven’t had much joy and energy for a while now, but they’re coming back, one cautious day and good night’s sleep at a time.