Thanksgiving - Audio & Text versions inside
A quick reflection before I figure out how to host 18 people in our tiny apartment
“Don’t forget,” my friend Katia warned a few nights ago as she dropped off two kilos of the elusive cranberry in anticipation of our Thanksgiving dinner, “you moved to Italy for la dolce vita, not for this New York style of work!”
She was referring to the fact that the last three months of my life have been consumed by two things: illness and work, but particularly the latter.
The work isn’t bad work. On the contrary—I’ve picked my project management tools back up to be utilized for a company I actually quite like, with colleagues that are quickly becoming friends; my voice over career chose this season to skyrocket and I now have at least fifteen audiobooks in the world (I lost count!); I’m so close to self-publishing my very first book—a dream of mine for many years and, incidentally, last year’s resolution—that I can taste it. No, really. It tastes like fresh red strawberries sliced into bubbly Prosecco. At least, I hope it will. (Adam, are you reading this?)
At a tender young age, I answered the classic “what do you want to be when you grow up?” question with one of three responses: a chicken nugget, a space paleontologist, or a “workaholic, and maybe I’ll think about getting married when I’m thirty.” Which at the time felt so far away as to effectively mean never. I was always going to prioritize work.
So in a sense, I’m in my natural element when I have a lot to do. I thrive on having projects to plan, work to produce, knots to untangle.
Although I wasn’t earning much in 2020 and 2021, I still worked, as many of you know. The Smells Like Quarantine Spirit and she existed. podcasts. The Utopia Italia essay and podcast project. The Just Beyond photo collection. No fewer than four major creative writing projects begun and in process.
But the difference between my creative projects and the work I’ve been doing this autumn is, well… that work was self-directed. I set the pace and the goals. My work now is, largely, dictated by deadlines and rewarded with paychecks.
I’ve felt a slow buildup of discomfort over the last few weeks, a buildup of a feeling both strange and familiar. It’s strange because I haven’t felt it in many years now. It’s familiar because it is the feeling of overload that used to be so ubiquitous in my life that I barely noticed it: at one point, it was as present as the air I breathed.
This pressure, of course, indicates that I’ve caught the pitiless eye of burnout, that insatiably hungry monster that feeds on so many of my overworked and exhausted peers. It’s not quite here, but it has smelled the tension, the frustration, the weariness, and so— it’s coming.
I connected the dots the night of Katia’s visit when, a few hours later at 10:30 pm, I was still finishing up some work and realized I hadn’t even left the apartment all day.
My response to finally naming burnout’s presence was surprising, however. Rather than feeling overwhelmed or anxious, I felt a kind of joy overtake me. You see, the fact that I was recognizing these signs so relatively early in this phase of workaholism was something to be celebrated.
Burnout has never taken me whole—with my strong personality and my tireless work ethic, it seems it was always more fruitful for the beast to simply feed off of my stress from the periphery, slowly siphoning away my creative energy, my patience, my delight over many years of being overworked.
My two years in Italy, two years of learning what life is outside of work, truly has changed me. I no longer wear the emptiness left by constantly fighting burnout as a badge of honor, a way to prove my value.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still find immense meaning in my work: I appreciate executing on my proficiencies and I appreciate the ability to contribute to my household financially.
But not at this pace, and not indefinitely.
I’m making hay while the sun shines this autumn, but I said no to some lucrative project management gigs for a month this winter, when Adam and I will fulfill a lifelong dream of mine to go to Vietnam and Thailand. Instead, during that month, we’ll explore and eat and record and I’ll focus on starting the next book in the series that will launch in just a few short days with The Expat Marriage Guidebook. The Expat Friendship Guidebook, anyone?
That is what I’m grateful for this year: a new way of understanding both life and work, the ability to distinguish between the two, and the ability to prioritize accordingly.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! If you aren’t here with us today— know that we miss you.