Before top surgery, I went on a speaking tour, often doing sessions on back-to-back days in completely different time zones. I was so tired by the end of the trip. I just kept telling myself, “I’ll rest after surgery.” I assumed taking 25 days off work would cure this extended burnout I’ve been feeling over the last month and really, the last year. I’m here to report that having all the time in the world didn’t help much. Time isn’t the only cure I’ll need to feel better after giving everything I have to work since I was 16.
I had jobs before 16 even. I was a babysitter. I sold lemonade. But that first printed check hit differently. It wasn’t $20 from someone’s wallet. It was a few hundred dollars. I got the first one and I wanted more. I wanted the security it made me feel. I wanted the choices my mom promised me money would buy. “If you have money, you have choices,” she would say. As the child of a military officer, I craved that perceived freedom. My own plan. My own way. Work was the path to get money so I worked my tail off.
By the time I graduated high school, I had three jobs (four if you count going to school). I ended my school day at 2:10 and changed into khakis and a blue polo shirt to work at a daycare. I spent my afternoons subbing for the teachers who needed to leave early, often spending my afternoons on shady playgrounds asking kids not to scream unless something was really wrong. At 6:30, I would change clothes in the bathroom then sit in traffic driving on I-66 across Northern Virginia to work at the American Eagle in the Fairfax Mall until 1. I loved the customerless, quiet nights I spent refolding jeans and the smell of Auntie Anne’s pretzels wafting in the door.
On the weekend, I worked at my friend’s hair salon. She just opened her shop and I was the first person hired to work the front desk. To this day, I think everyone should have that job at some point in their life. You will learn to manage expectations, angry customers, and cash. Plus, there’s always a junior stylist who will dye your hair for free. You can try every color you want.
I have very few regrets about my life but looking back on those years, one is clear: I wish I didn’t work so hard at that age. While I have great stories and memories from those times, I know I started my burnout early pushing through the exhaustion to get a few more dollars on my check. I wish I had known how hard I would have to work every year for the rest of my life to get a few more dollars. Most of all, I wish I realized sooner how a few more dollars won’t guarantee happiness.
Frankly, I could use some of that endless high school worker energy now as I try to plan out what I want to do for the next 20 years. If the first half of my life is over, what do I want to do with all these lessons in the second big chapter of this precious life? I’m 40 and I’m tired. Frustrated. Wondering where things are headed and what I need to do to feel like I’ve actually accomplished something.
As I’ve gotten more brave to actually say these things out loud, it’s clear to me how many people I know are in the same place. They feel purposeful in the sense they have community and connection, but when it comes to work? We all feel like we’ve been working in a burned out state for too long. There's collective grief for weekends and loved ones lost when work became the priority. For the energy we once had to do it all. For a future that felt worth working for.
Do you feel it too?
The last time I felt this way, I packed up my stuff and moved into a van. As much as I loved that life and I know my girlfriend would come with me, that’s not the fix this time. I’m too old to live without AC. But I’m not going to just accept that I’ll live this next part of life in a persistent state of burnout. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t always feel this way minus van life.
The only thing that has soothed my mind, and maybe yours too, is the knowing that I’ve been here before and there will be another time.That this discomfort and disdain is often a beginning in disguise. Unfortunately for me and most of us humans, growth rarely performs a beautiful unraveling for us the way growth appears in nature like the nodes on plants that become delicate leaves or cocoons that birth beautiful butterflies.
No, growth creeps in during these moments when we least expect it. When we are the most burned out to say, “well, are you ready?” That’s when we become. That’s when we grow in ways that help us know what this life is for.
