All aboard the Burnout Bus

It’s the end of Month 4 of my self-employed journey and we have reached an interesting crossroads, somewhere on the corner of Exhaustion Street and Knackered Avenue.

It started about two months ago, when I confessed to some colleagues that I wasn’t getting enough sleep.

Then it progressed to memory lapses. Never around work (thank goodness) but anything non-work related would fall out of my head like a sieve – I’d get up to do something and instantly forget why I was standing.

Then, around two weeks ago, I started getting a permanent faint dizziness. I assumed it was the start of some kind of cold or virus but none of the other symptoms ever came.

The final straw came yesterday, when I took 30 minutes to write an email that should have taken 3.

Something was wrong.

The words only your mother can get away with

“Oh my god, Fabienne – you’ve put on weight.”

“Hi mum, nice to see you too”, I thought.

But the truth is, she was right. She’s just the only one bold enough to say it to my face (she’s also French, which helps with the directness).

Brain in a jar

You see, since July, I’ve basically given up going outside. Not only that – I’ve barely been moving.

With three major freelance clients and a burgeoning business offer of my own, my hours were stretching longer and longer. I went from doing an already hardworking 9am – 6pm to a slightly insane 7am to 11pm most days.

Yes, I had breaks for lunch and the occasional nap, but those breaks basically consisted of shuffling from one seat (the desk chair) to another (the sofa), and exchanging one screen (the laptop) for another (the TV).

My husband does all the shopping and cooking in our house, and we have a cleaner.

So I wasn’t even doing basic household chores.

Waking, working, sleeping.

I was behaving like a brain in a jar.

I’m a smart cookie. I’m also really into all-things wellbeing.

So why have I been doing this to myself?

Why it’s hard to slow down

• I’m at the start of my freelance journey and I want to prove that I can not only do this, but smash this, to myself and others
• Earning considerably more money is… well, great. And kind of addictive, especially if you’ve spent years in a low-paid industry, so you feel the need to catch up.
• I really, REALLY love the work

This last point is the one that truly bamboozled me.

Up until now, I didn’t think it was possible to become stressed or unwell doing something you really enjoy.

But guess what: IT IS.

Happy-shattered

“It’s so weird”, I said to my friend recently, “I’m genuinely so happy in my skin now, and proud of what I’m doing. I wake up every day buzzing to get going and have to pinch myself at the work I get to do. But I’m also going so ridiculously fast, and learning and delivering so much new stuff constantly. My brain is going 1000 miles per hour.”

Happy-shattered is a completely new type of stress for me.

It’s not the stress of old, that I’m so familiar with – anxiety, dread, overthinking, self-doubt, shame, stomach pain, tears.

This new stress is so different that I didn’t even realise it WAS stress until physical symptoms started arising.

Happy-shattered is exhilarating. I feel like a nerdy, excitable teenager who can’t wait to do her homework. But it’s excitement tinged with obsession. You can’t stop, even when you know you should. You absorb and absorb, hungry to learn, but don’t leave any time to digest. You switch from one thing to another at the speed of light, without a moment in between. You are, as we like to say of our modern world, ‘always on’.

And obsession has the power to make or break us.

Make us because no one ever achieved anything of note by sitting back and taking it easy. Great achievements always take intense effort.

Break us because we don’t need to look far to see a litany of geniuses* whose dedication to their passions pushed them over the edge, and into some pretty dark places.

Crisis averted – so what now?

For the first and probably only time in my life, I’m glad my mum called attention to my growing thighs.

Coupled with the growing brain fog, it was the wake-up call I needed to jump off that bus to Burnoutsville.

I’m currently staying at my brother’s.

He lives by a beautiful canal, with peaceful narrowboats, chocolate box cottages and swaying trees. Mum and I walked there last night, and watched the cows munching the grass.

My dizziness lifted for the first time in days, and today, I could think straight again.

I’ve learnt a hugely important lesson that I will carry with me as I continue to grow my business, and design my working life.

As much as we might glorify our minds, we are not brains in a jar.

There’s a reason that the saying is ‘Mind, body and soul’ and not ‘Mind, mind and mind’.

Over the next few months, I’m going to pay more attention to body and soul.

It’s not rocket science – I know what to do.

Walk, run, cycle, stretch. Stare at the clouds, listen to the birds, read a book.

Oh, and eat fewer chocolate bars.

Till next month,

Fabienne

x

* Definitely not calling myself a genius by the way – unless you count encyclopaedic knowledge of RuPaul’s Drag Race.