I’m walking through the desert and I’ve been walking for a long time, longer than expected. I’ve climbed countless hills to get to this point. My phone tells me that the water I desperately crave is nearby. But it’s the desert and so my phone reception is dodgy and it turns out that the water is further away than I first thought. I’m approaching a hill and the closer I get to it, the bigger it becomes. I need to climb it to get to the water. I stop walking. I stand at the bottom of the hill and I cry. I’ve climbed so many of these hills with good spirit. I can’t believe there’s another one. I’m exhausted. I’m burned out.
Burnout was one of the buzzwords of 2019 and it put into words exhaustion that’s specifically caused by our work. It’s such a phenomenon that we’ve done two podcast episodes on burnout, including one with the author of the viral Buzzfeed article, Anne Helen Petersen.
Burnout isn’t a case of having too much work to do. It’s caused by feeling like we’re not getting back what we’re putting into our work. In recent weeks, I battled adversity, sleepless nights, disappointments and rejection. I pulled myself together, put a smile on my face and found the energy to perform and deliver every damn day. The desert is a metaphor, obviously, because I haven’t been beyond Zone 3 in London for seven months, but because the results I want from my work still are far off, crying at the bottom of that big mountain is how I felt.
One of the first thoughts I articulated on the internet in January 2019, was that work-life balance doesn’t exist. Our work invades our lives and I don’t mean the time we spend doing the work, but the mental impact work has on us. My burnout started tumbling into the rest of my life. My brain felt full. I lost and forgot things and it was like everything was breaking around me: my bike tyres were randomly deflating and my new bike lock stopped working. I struggled to be fully present in social situations. I went into a negative headspace. I know things are really bad when I start to wish I had a full-time job.
When burned out, I go into a jealousy spiral as I see my friends who got corporate jobs after university sunning themselves in fancy hotels in places like Mykonos. We’re at the age where people are being rewarded for their stable careers by buying houses and going on nice holidays and as I set my humble monthly budget for August on Monzo, I berate myself for choosing this life where I put so much of myself into it and I’m not getting what I want out of it. Then I feel guilty for these thoughts.
As a commentator on work, who’s talked extensively about burnout, surely I shouldn’t still be getting burned out? Surely, I should have nailed my working practices by now?The guilt makes it worse.
Taking a break isn’t the answer. Even if I take an EasyJet flight out of the desert, I still have to come back and face that hill. So this is what I did instead: I cried to my mum.
I then pulled out a pen and paper and wrote down all my frustrations, categorised by life pillar: money/work/social/health/home etc. I let all the negative thoughts flow out of me without shame. I suppose this is the opposite of writing a gratitude list. After that, I wrote a letter to myself and the answer came out of that:
“When you write it all out, you realise there’s little change to be made. You just got to keep going. Keep going my friend because you’re on the right path. One foot in front of the other. You’ll get there. Maybe sit down on the bench underneath the tree. Pause. Breathe in and breathe out. Stand up and keep going.”
To decide to keep going is an active form of practising patience. I listened to inspirational stories, including Bernardine Evaristo on How to Fail who talked about how most writers give up. She was the first black woman to win the prestigious Booker Prive with her eighth novel.
As work impacts our lives, by improving our lives we can manage our feelings around our work. I put into practice some of the advice we always give on the podcast: eat more greens and move the body as much as possible. There’s enough time, I’m talking ten-minute walks in-between tasks and spontaneous bursts of arm-swinging. Drink more water and less caffeine. Find an activity that does for your mind what McDonald’s does for your body. For me, it’s watching reality TV.
Then I start aggressively reframing how I see my work and life scenarios. By chance this week, I happened to read Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. I’d never normally read such a masculine self-help book that tells so many stories of men at war, but I was recommended it by an Italian with nice eyes and so I wanted to read it 🤷♀️.
The book talks about turning everything negative into an opportunity and so I embarked on an exercise to reframe every single thing in my life. I asked myself: What does life my look life if I turn my perceived disadvantages into positives?
“Remember, sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home.”
Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle is the Way
I know what I want and it stands on the other end of that hill. I know it takes time and I know that new hills will emerge as I go. But I also know that I’m on the right path so all I have to do is keep going.
The goss
This week on the podcast, Anna and I shared our stories of when we lost our jobs. We hope it brings comfort in times of such uncertainty. Listen now and leave us a review, it really helps.
I’m reading: ‘Success Addicts’ Choose Being Special Over Being Happy, Why We Reach for Nostalgia in Times of Crisis, How to Ask if Everything Is OK When It’s Clearly Not, Your Personality Is Changing. Here's How to Change It for the Better, 7 Professional Writers on Dealing with Rejection, The best article ever written on morning routine and Thoughts from a dating webinar.
I’m listening to Florence Given on the Alonement podcast saying: “I love being single because I'm constantly learning about myself”
Thanks to Franki Cookney, who in her newsletter, The Overthinker’s Guide to Sex, wrote further thoughts in response to my piece on dating’s new red flag: “Again, this feels to me like a prime example of how the lessons from the pandemic can be put into practice in our sex lives.” And thank you to Nicola Slawson for talking about the same piece in her newsletter, The Single Supplement, see what she had to say about it here.
Speaking of Nicola, Nicola Slawson and I are back with the second part of our life writing webinars, where we’ll go into more depth about pitching and coming up with new story ideas. Join us next Monday. Our classes get results (see below!)
A little shout out to @Nicola_Slawson and @tiffphilippou - your workshop the other week was the push I needed to finally set up my own newsletter which I launched earlier this week, so thank you 🙏🏻 mondayoops.substack.com
Burnout and me
Stick it in my veins!! This articulates exactly how I've been feeling, too. So nice to know I'm not alone wandering in the desert ♥️