Burnout Week 6

(link to my "I'm burned out and taking a break" post for context)

When I started planning my break, the one thing I knew was essential was ground rules. I made these before I ever told a soul about my plan.

Rule #1 - Rest. Radically. For 2 weeks minimum. Longer if you have to and naps are required if you get sleepy at any point

Rule #2 - Movement every day

Rule #3 - No thinking about work AT ALL until June. I am allowed to accept money in exchange for something I enjoyed making in May, but not one moment sooner. No "what am I doing with my life" until June.

Rule #4 - Play. Every day. All day if that is possible.

Aside from the movement every day (every day, really?) I'm doing pretty well. About twice a week I realize I could have taken a nap, it just never occurred to me. And at least 5x a day I boop my nose and say "no, Betts. New thought, Betts" and I think about anything other than "what do I want to do for work when I grow up?"

If my parents were still with us and you asked them, "what was the most frustrating thing about raising your daughter?" The answer would be "No stopped meaning what we thought it meant. For our otherwise perfect princess, "No" is a personal challenge." 

To that, I just want to say, it's not me! It's just the way my brain works. But I have just discovered the superpower in this quirk!

See, every time I tell my brain to get out of the pit of employment despair, it's forced to go around my roadblock. It would seem the question of "What do I want to do for work?" would be large enough that I would need to veer off into picking up new songs to get stuck in my head, what to plant, or doom spiraling about the fate of our country. But no. There is so much. Rich, luscious territory that was always too wild to venture into during the 15-20 minutes I ever had for uninterrupted thought.

Now my brain is turning over questions (seriously – not just in a Cosmo quiz) like 

• What is work?

• Under what conditions would I feel ok exchanging my labor a fraction of its value?

• Where do I want to direct the skills and abilities I have, in the limited time I have on this rock?

• What is the economy of our home?

• What are the real economic needs of our family?

• How do I really want my community governed?

Those questions are certainly adjacent to "What job do I want?" But they define the container in which I ask that question later. I've taken personality tests and values quizzes and talked about my interests ad nauseam. But I was always looking at the wrong data. To find the answers to these questions has forced me to ask other, much more revealing questions like: 

Who am I when I'm not performing survival? I have been caretaking or surviving trauma for most of my adult life. There are major patterns to interrupt, and they hide in places I never thought to look. The sabbatical has given my nervous system a safe cocoon from which to work.

What does legitimate authority actually look like — and how do I claim mine? I know my shit. Learning how to share my wisdom and knowledge outside an institution giving me permission is a new skill. But hey, here I am writing a newsletter. woo!

What does sustainable work actually require — for me specifically, and for people like me in systems not built for us? Women, people with trauma history, parents, neurodivergent people, people who don't have "executive presence" – how do we make systems that honor our contributions? How do we accurately name systems and improve them? Or build new ones?

What do I owe the people I love who the system has failed? There is a question forming here around what love looks like when an institution is the obstacle, and what I can do without sacrificing myself to the fight.

What is the right container for what I've lived? As per the last post, my life hasn't had a clean arc. I've been put in a sort of martyr container and I don't want to be there. So redefining my experience through the lens of what I've learned and how I've alchemized my experiences into strengths has been a big theme.

This is the work that people talk about when they say "do the work." I've done a lot of work at various depths and breadths. But this is the most open playground I've had for these concepts. I've had almost nothing to run away to. I can doomscroll. I can clean. Cook. But really, there is nowhere to run to and I'm not really looking to anyway. It feels so good to have space to do this. And it makes me mourn for the wisdom we have lost by making this kind of work so impossible for people to do. Everyone really should be granted a sabbatical. Every. One.