Coming Clean: Burnout Blues
The ocean is my only medication
Hello from the Keys!
Sometimes I don’t know what to write about.
I’m trying to develop this newsletter as a resource to help people live out their values and beat the monster of burnout and overwhelm. Also, that’s the purpose of this getaway for me. It’s just the two of us taking 10 days of leave this summer as I’m getting ready for another busy season at work with training exercises and deployment later this year.
I wanted to write about the importance of disconnecting and taking time to recharge but here’s the truth… I’m failing.
I can’t stop thinking about work.
I’m stressed. Antsy. Working towards big life changes that can’t take place until next year.
I feel stuck.
Ok, let’s get real
On this vacation, I can’t seem to disconnect - which is what I wanted to do for this time. I wanted this road trip throughout Florida to be a time of relaxing and reconnecting. And yet I keep finding my brain trying to solve challenging problems at work - sometimes even though I'm in an environment where brushing this aside should be easy. We've been on the road for just over a week staying in Jensen Beach, West Palm Beach, Key Largo and now Key West. (I know, woe is me.)
And we've had some amazing experiences that I'm very grateful for, but I had in my heart how this time would feel like recharging and yet still, I can't for the life of me seem to get out of my own head.
I'm constantly frustrated by how work continues to live rent-free in my brain as I keep catching myself catastrophizing how I’ll have to deal with a multitude of challenges when I get back.
I’m reminded of a recent conversation I was having with Stephen Kent and a fellow Geeky Stoics book club member, Cody. We’re in our final week and I wanted to highlight this passage that leaped right off the page at me. (Rather aggressively I might add.)
Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.... Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. - C.S. Lewis
That's me right now.
It's not that the time was taken from me. It's that I haven't been able to use this time in the way that I wanted to - based on my own levels of stress.
The truth is I've been working hard to make some drastic changes in my approach to work (and profession) that will hopefully begin taking effect after my deployment next year. But transparently, the time between now and then feels like I'm trapped in this prison of stress and overwhelm that I have no control over.
Is that feeling healthy? Constructive? Helpful? No. But it’s the devil I’m dealing with.
So what’s the takeaway? I want to let you know that I will be radically honest in my writing because work-life balance is a long, messy process. It takes more than one vacation to recover from burnout. It takes work to create balance. And it’s okay that it’s messy. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
I’m glad you’re along for the ride.
MTFBWY
-Riley