I looked through my drafts and the last post I was in the middle of writing was about leadership and personality tests. The draft is from September.
I skimmed it. It all still made sense. It’s also from where I noticed I was starting to check out and burn out from everything. Maybe I’ll post that draft later this week.
The last two semesters of master’s were hard. It wasn’t like I didn’t expect the program to be hard, however, it wasn’t the content that was hard. And to an extent, it wasn’t the amount of work either. It was being let down my own, probably too high, expectations of what the program would be, should be and could be.
Pair that with running an LGBTQ+ center in the South – during the 2024 Presidential election, and anyone could predict that the first six months of this year were going to feel big. But the past few months have been more than that. There have been more mornings where getting out of bed was harder and I was getting out later, which meant later or longer work days that were already long and sometimes ending late. It’s also looked like crying more often and unexpectedly. It’s meant a short fuse and getting frustrated at little things – or things that should be small. These are all things I’ve shared in therapy, and now it feels like a time I can pull myself out of the hole.
Over the past four years, through moving to South Carolina, making new relationships – removing relationships, progressing my career as a health coach, a nonprofit leader and as an advocate – I know how I have ebbed and flowed with my own health journey. I know what calculated decisions I made to help lessen burnout, set different or better boundaries, hold myself accountable or give myself a break. And as I’ve told hundreds of clients over the years, your journey isn’t always going to look like how you want it to, but it may look how you needed it to. It’s also ok to be frustrated or mourn changes and choices – but it’s about what you’re doing next.
And for me, I’m not 100% sure yet what it’s going to look like, but I know that it’s starting here. It’s starting with sitting down at my computer and thinking through the things I have let go over the past few years because they felt hard or they felt like they took up too much time that should be dedicated to something else.
So step 1. might be sitting down once a week and writing to you. Whether you’re listening or reading or not, blogging has always been about getting something out of my head and in front of me so I could process it. And I’d like to write again. Write about things I want to, things about my day – things that bring me joy.
Writing also holds me accountable – like a to-do list. If it stays in my head it doesn’t feel as real, but it’s also more likely to get lost in there with everything else.
This is post 1. We’re climbing out.
