Several years ago on this date, my brain snapped.
Or shifted. Blipped. Instantly changed forever in such a way as to never be the same again.
Something like that.
I was 2000 miles away from home on a work trip. At the time, my role was internal training for a particular team in our organization. I was responsible for the development of all of the online courses, which was complicated that year by a move to a new LMS. I had 60+ courses I had to move to the new platform, which was a full-time job in and of itself. In addition, however, I was creating multiple new courses and additional materials to support a series of product updates and supporting in-person trainings and a book club, as well as traveling for meetings and trainings. It should have been the work of two people, and I’d been asking my manager for support. At the time, though, I had a long history of just working until I dropped, so I had been putting in the nights and weekends and doing my best to get it all done.
That week, there were quite a few of us observing multiple days of training while conducting practice sessions and additional internal training on the side. At the same time, I was attempting to complete the new online courses. A new tool released that week which had some significant technical glitches, so I was in communication with the team at the office and relaying information to increasingly frustrated users on location with me. I juggled tasks all day and would retreat to my hotel room each evening to work for a few more hours, hoping for at least a few hours of sleep.
By Day 3, my stress level was through the roof. I was physically shaky trying to keep myself upright and moving forward. I excused myself at one point, found an empty hallway, and broke down into an anxiety attack – doubled over, struggling to breathe, tears streaming down my face. Then pulled myself together and went back to work.
Day 4 was much the same.
On the morning of the final day, a teammate and I had an opportunity to meet with my manager’s manager, to make a plea for getting some help. I wasn’t confident any help would actually come, but I was glad to have at least gotten to share some of my frustration.
I was scheduled to fly home that day, leaving mid-afternoon to return home in the middle of the night. I fully intended to get as much work done on the plane as possible, knowing I’d likely need to work over the weekend as well.
After getting through airport security, I hurried my way to my gate.
I found myself standing in front of a huge window that looked out over the runways, some green hills beyond, and a perfect blue summer sky with a few small, fluffy clouds. It felt like I hadn’t seen the sky in a while.
I just stared. And in that moment, I felt something in my mind shift. It was like a light switch had been flipped, this immediate and definite change to Something Is Different Now. Even the blue of the sky was different, bluer somehow.
I couldn’t think of another way to describe the feeling other than saying that my brain had snapped.
And after that, the drive to push myself to work so many hours, so do multiple jobs with minimal complaint, to take on extra projects, to bend over backwards for unexpected, last-minute requests, was just… gone.
I couldn’t do it anymore. Even when I tried.
No work got done on the flight home. Or that weekend. I just couldn’t.
I assumed after a break and some rest, my brain would “snap back” and would be like it was, but it never has. The unrealistic expectations I had for myself (and the passion I’d had for parts of that particular industry) were, quite simply, gone.
A few months later, I found another job, one with a more clearly defined role and more reasonable expectations for work load.
I also made the decision not to work on the weekends anymore, unless there was something I truly wanted to do. (As it turned out, that ended up being a very, very rare occurrence.) Working less, while still averaging 40-45 hours a week, resulted in higher quality work, and some of my favorite projects I designed came over those next few years.
It wasn’t as though I was magically perfectly able to find work-life balance. There was plenty of stress and overwork in the following years. I am, after all, still me. But I stopped defaulting to “yes.” I was more willing to speak up about what could and couldn’t be done in a given timeframe and learned how to better manage deadlines, requesting changes when needed to make sure the work got done, one more reasonable pile at a time.