Life after burnout
Moving from burnout, to existential crisis, and back into life as a design leader.
I’ve been on leave for the last three months, recovering from burnout, moving into new chapters of my life, and what feels like fumbling through each day. For the last few months, I’ve lived with this narrative that something is wrong and I must fix it. That I caused this burnout, and with a little bit of hard work —it could be fixed. My systems thinking brain likes a good challenge — so I set out for a solution (Yeah, I know what y’all are thinking — keep reading).
The early stage of my leave I aptly named The Unraveling. As if I had pulled on the loose threads of life, like one does to a wool sweater, I unravelled all of my truths, my beliefs, and my decisions. At the end of the unravelling, I found myself sitting in a tangled mess, without a clue for what to do next.
In this tangled mess, I spent a lot of time looking for answers, for understanding, for guidance. I mean, I’ve spent my whole life doing this — but it always felt like a side project. Existentialism as a side project, what a concept.
I have consumed content in every possible format — from Masterclasses with Margaret Atwood, obscure unedited David Foster Wallace interviews, and podcasts from Jungian analysts. The book orgy currently happening on my coffee table sees Maya Angelou’s poetry fraternizing with Alan Watts and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters is tucked snuggly into the bosom of Portney’s Complaint and Anthem by Ayn Rand.
Quite frankly, I’m surprised that Indigo hasn’t checked in on me yet. The carts I’ve built and the purchases I’ve made should have anyone concerned. Luckily they can’t see my thrifted books, my youtube history, or my Google searches. But, if they did check on me, they’d find the cast of I Heart Huckabees chaotically summed up in one person.
Anyways, early into The Unraveling, unlike Indigo, my dad checked in on me a lot — often asking how “the crisis” was going. One day while I was driving, he called and his words of wisdom that day: “You’re looking for answers where there aren’t any. We all are, that’s what life is.” My dad is a fairly quiet man — but when he does talk he’s got three major subjects: kick-your-ass-into-gear advice, MacGyver-level scheming, or a joke that outsmarts when it lands.
This fell into the advice column, and at the time I listened and held onto those words without really understanding them. Since then, they’ve turned around and around and around in my mind (mulling is a strength of mine). It’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve truly understood that there is nothing to fix. Things aren’t broken or whole — there’s only iteration. There’s no wrong or right — there’s only context. There are no good or bad decisions — it’s only reasons why. It’s all paradox. There are no answers, just understanding.
It’s a life of paradox. This reality hit me like a freight train (see gif above for reenactment). For those who don’t know what I’m talking about— paradox is the ability to understand and accept opposing or multiple truths. Paradox is breathing that sigh of relief, only to feel the pang of guilt, dread, or grief. To understand that things can be both right and wrong. That we can be both good and bad in the same moment. That polarity doesn’t necessarily mean opposition, it’s not an either or.
Understanding that everything is paradox is almost like being let into a secret club. A club of people who (ironically, and paradoxically) are lost in the absolute uncertainty of it all and completely enthralled by it at the same time.
The first time I truly understood this was listening to Obama and Springsteen’s podcast, Renegades: Born in the USA. They talk about the paradox of loving America for its potential, while being so deeply disappointed by its current actions. About how easy it is to pick one polarity to revel in — to settle into this polemical era.
After listening to the Renegades podcast, the concept of paradox appeared in my life at an almost-comical rate. From podcasts with Simon Sinek & Brene Brown, to interviews with Marshall McLuhan, it’s like I was on the paradoxical breadcrumb trail. In the words of Alok Vaid-Menon: multiplicity of truth is healing.
On this breadcrumb trail, I’ve taken in an astounding amount of information. Yet, surprisingly, something that hasn’t changed on this journey is my two truths. The first one: life is nothing without learning and iteration. Number two truth: authenticity is contagious. So with these two truths, I am here sharing with you a very vulnerable cut of a few things I’ve learned on this breadcrumb trail.
To all those who are living in a world of black and white, of holding only one truth at a time — I apprehensively welcome you into the Paradox Club. Take this as your inauguration, and the very start of your own breadcrumb trail. With that, I’ll leave you with a few realities that have bubbled up to the surface over the last few months.
Make an intentional mess, but don’t leave crumbs.
Don’t leave crumbs is life advice that Matthew McConaughey offered the graduating class of University of Houston in 2015. (I have a small obsession with commencement speeches). I’ve been leaning into this crumbless life for the last few years — ensuring that wherever I can, I’m living intentionally, with integrity. A life without crumbs is an honest life — one without skeletons in the closet — without the haunting of lies or deceit.
In leaning into the no-crumb lifestyle, I overdosed on living a tidy life. Instead of not leaving crumbs, I didn’t make them in the first place. The only way to eat a croissant without leaving crumbs is to not eat one at all — and that’s how I was living my life. Avoiding the potential messes, gracefully dodging tough conversations, and living without the things I truly needed to be happy, so that everything could remain crumbless. Part of this was due to the doubt that I could navigate hard things (I’m a cover-my-eyes-run-through-discomfort kind of woman) and part of it was my need to please and to be accepted.
Well, I’ve learned that life is too short to live without crumbs (or croissants for that matter). Too short to live for other people’s expectations, as well. In the words of Elsa Dorfman: everything I did made sense if you knew me. And this is how I have started to live my life. A life of integrity, and intention, without the sacrifice of losing myself or my needs. Showing up authentically, holding real conversations with those around me, and owning life when it gets messy.
In his commencement speech, Matthew McConaughey built onto the lyrics of John Mellencamp when he said: “An honest man’s pillow is his peace of mind, and when you lay down on the pillow at night, no matter who’s in our bed we ALL sleep alone.”
Joan Didion had similar thoughts in her 1961 Vogue article on self respect: “However long we post-pone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un-comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.”
When you close out your day, you have to own your decisions and how you handled them. There’s no option but to live and prosper in a life that feels true to you.
Find definition in the undefinable
I have often found myself in the gaps between introversion and extroversion. Between solitude and loneliness, confident and timid or even rural and urban. I have always found a tension in these binary concepts — tension in the demand to be just one thing.
Throughout my life, I have held myself to these binary expectations, and felt shame when I couldn’t achieve the purest definition of them. If I choose a life of solitude, I must never get lonely. If I choose the life of introversion, I must always look inwards for my energy.
Donald Hall, at the age of 87, was the first to introduce me to the concept that it is human to thrive on the pendulum between binaries. Living a self-proclaimed life of solitude, Hall reflects on the spectrum between solitude and loneliness.
I look forward to her presence and feel relief when she leaves. Now and then, especially at night, solitude loses its soft power and loneliness takes over. I am grateful when solitude returns. — Referring to his house keeper in 2016
I remember reading and rereading the line “I look forward to her presence and feel relief when she leaves.” over and over again — feeling validated in a way that I still can’t describe. As someone who craves solitude, intimate connection and real conversation most of the time, seeking the opposite can feel like betrayal. Like somehow, if I admit that I also want a splash of small-talk at a party — I’m acting in bad faith.
I work everyday to shed the labels, the expectations, the obligations that binary views of myself create. I constantly remind myself to find grace and revel in the spectrum, rather than feel the burden of the binary. I am not one thing, none of us are, and letting go of the obligation to meet arbitrary expectations has created a freedom in being just as I am.
In the words of Kafka: I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.
Trust your gut, your brain lies
We are all ruled by an inner committee, and surprisingly, what we think may not always be true. Erica Reitman has a delightfully crass label for it — she calls it the Dick Brain. Other’s in the self-help world call them limiting beliefs — you can hear more about it in The Self Love Fix podcast — and if you’d like an equally crushing and liberating activity — try jotting down some of your own limiting beliefs.
We all know that feeling when we just know. When we can feel it down to our core that we know what we need to do. That’s your gut talking — and sometimes, if you’re lucky — it’s the loudest voice in our brain. But, as the Jungians (and most philosophical camps) point out, we are run by a committee consisting of things like egos, souls, shadows, and esteems. And all of these are fettered with trauma, history, bias and complexes. Sometimes these committee members will overrule the gut feeling, convincing us to head in another direction. They mean well, and usually they’re trying to keep us safe — but it might not be what we really need.
And if you’ve watched Chris Voss’s Masterclass on The Art of Negotiation, you’ll know that tactical empathy is step one in negotiation. Spend some time understanding your own inner motivations, behaviours and attitudes. Listen to them, understand them, nuture them. You’ll be better equipped to know when your committee is leading you astray, and what you need to do to get them back on track.
Some parting words —
For anyone who is on a similar journey — I will leave you with one last metaphor. Diving into a crisis and unraveling your life feels a lot like that time that you decided to rearrange your room as a kid. You get half way through — every possible possession is strewn about — and you’re sitting in the middle of it all, overwhelmed with the fear of how it could possibly go back together. You feel as though you’ve taken on too much. You’ve been distracted by the rabbit hole of nostalgia. You wish you hadn’t started the process in the first place. And then, piece by piece, you decide what fits and what doesn’t — what you’ll need, and what suits the new you. And as James Hollis reminds us, you’ll be better prepared for the next time the unravelling comes along.
