An Update on Burnout & Strictly Business

I recently finished a book called Choose Joy: Relieve Burnout, Focus on Your Happiness, and Infuse More Joy into Your Everyday Life. I highly recommend it. It was also quite a lot like reading my current story. 

As you likely know, I have a full-time “real” job as a marketing director. It’s a job that I love in a lot of ways, and I’m definitely good at it, but lately, it has been a lot. I’m working long hours, but my to-do list keeps growing. There have been a lot of twelve and fourteen hour days over the last few weeks. When I get home in the evenings, it’s already six or seven o’clock. By the time I walk my dog, change clothes, and make and eat dinner, another hour or more has passed. 

And then I just… sit there. 

I don’t mean to. I always sit down with the intention of writing, editing, reading, the things I love with my whole heart, the things that bring me pure joy. But then? I zone out. I pick up my phone and start scrolling, play a few rounds of a game. I go on Pinterest, google a few things, change the TV channel. The next thing I know, it’s midnight. I teach a lot of early morning Pure Barre classes (another joy-bringing thing), so then I’m getting four, maybe five hours of sleep, getting up, and doing it all over again. The last several Friday nights, I’ve crashed hard, even fallen asleep on my sofa. Weekends are when I try to get everything I didn’t get to during the week done, and the next thing I know, the Sunday scaries have set in. 

In the midst of all of this, I just haven’t felt like myself. I’m someone who is driven. Purposeful. I love checking off to-dos, meeting goals, being in a community. I love socializing, exploring, seeing what adventures are to be had. I love watching Tony Vitello post-game press conferences, not just because he’s not bad to look at, but because I love college baseball and you never know what he might say. 

I haven’t watched a single Tony Vitelllo post-game press conference, and we’re two weeks deep into baseball season. 

I’ve cried a lot, too. Seemingly for no reason at all, my eyes will well up and I’ll feel buried under a storm of emotions I can’t identify. Sometimes, the space between my shoulders tenses up and won’t release. There are even days when my resting heart rate has been elevated. 

All this to say, I realized upon reading Choose Joy and having a few conversations with people far smarter and experienced than I am, that I am experiencing an extreme case of burnout. Burnout, as described and recognized by the World Health Organization, is: 

“A syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job 
• reduced professional efficacy.
  

Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

I don’t agree with that last part as burnout is clearly impacting other areas of my life, but that is neither here nor there. I check all the boxes, and while reading Choose Joy, it was like reading my current story. I am not thriving. 

When I identify a problem, I look for ways to fix it. With the burnout I’m currently experiencing, there are a number of things I’m actively doing to course correct, because I cannot live like this. I won’t get into them in this post, but I’m happy to share in another, as I’ve found these tools and journal prompts immensely helpful. 

One of the decisions I’ve made, however, I do need to share with you. 

I’ve decided to postpone the release of my new book, Strictly Business. 

It was hard for me to reach this decision. I hate disappointing people. I hate not meeting a deadline. I hate feeling like I’m not following through with something I said I would do. Yet I know this book isn’t ready. It needs one final round of editing, and I didn’t love the cover design. It would be okay to release it on March 4th as planned, but it wouldn’t be up to my standards. It wouldn’t reflect my best work. 

I hate disappointing people. I really hate that I feel like I failed. But I also know this isn’t my best work, and I want to make sure my best work is what goes to market. I have a new release date in mind, but I want to make sure I can hit the deadline before I publicly share it. I want to make sure I don’t regret what I put into the world. 

If you were one of my pre-orders, I’m sorry. I hope you will give Strictly Business a chance when it is released to the world. If you’re upset with this change in publication, I’m sorry. I truly am. But for my own sake, for my mental health, I need this slight delay. I need it for my long term publishing goals. I need to give Strictly Business the best chance I can before I turn my attention to the Political Gain series. 

Above all, I need to take care of my mental health and my burnout. 

If you follow me on social media, you know that I’m currently on vacation in Turks & Caicos. That was step one on my burnout recovery. Then I’ll put the next steps of my burnout recovery into practice, including make sure my life is aligning with the personal values I’ve identified for myself, one of those tools I mentioned above. 

I appreciate your patience and grace as I navigate this world of recovering from burnout and realigning my life to be in line with what I need to be successful. I need to find my happy. I need to find balance and freedom again. 

We’re getting there, friends. 

Knowing the problem helps. 

A trip to Turks and Caicos that has been planned since July? That definitely helps. 

New Strictly Business release date coming soon.