Getting my to my passion of all things snail mail. I ordered artists prints as postcards and I try to send letters every week or so.

I don’t want to keep hashing this out, but I feel like it is worth talking about once and for all because I feel like it has kinda changed me so getting down on paper helps as it is now part of my story.

So yeah, burnout is real, and I had to learn it the hard way.

Three years ago I went back to working a nine to five corporate job after homesteading full time and being a SAHM. I loved being, but my husband and I did a trade and I went back to work and he stayed home with the kids. He actually homeschooled our oldest, which was cool, and he got to catch up on spending time with the kids after working so much when they were little. So I was back in the corporate world, but working remotely from the homestead. It was enjoyable as I felt like I got to immerse myself in projects and expand my skills and knowledge on certain topics. As the years passed, I was promoted and with each promotion I was excited to be recognized for my skills. Like that time away from work hadn’t hurt my career in any way. But the company I was with was also capitalizing on this. I always known that “I was replaceable” but I didn’t really see that as how a company would have ZERO interest in my well being. And I mean zero. The culture wasn’t great at the company, sure, but with people leaving in droves and my role absorbing theirs, I initially thought this was a transition period and “they” had a plan to eventually split the work load and to get me more support down the road. And for a while, I was riding the high of being the '“go-to” person who was holding things together. And yes, I had a team of developers and Integration Specialists (support roles) but I was the only experienced Account Manager left.

Here are my lovely ladies in the coop. We kept the chickens even while I was working, but we downsized considerably. Only now am I rebuilding the flock and adding animals

The company did hire two more, who were green to the industry, after I asked them to hire qualified Account Managers, so now my time was training them and doing my work. I thought this was part of the process. I would ask for help and small changes would be made or not made. Some they said they couldn’t do. But I kept going. And my clients were growing and expanding rapidly. In six months, I had over four roll outs completed with more planned for the following quarter.

And during the last year, I got pneumonia after completing two back to back roll outs. I only missed one day of work during both episodes. And I would drag myself to my office and just do as much as I could in a day. And then I kept going and going. At Christmas, I could feel my pneumonia coming back after catching a cold, and it scared me. How could a healthy, crunchy, mom get hit so hard? And I knew it, it was stress.

I emailed my boss when I was back and explained that the stress was two much and I wanted to reduce my hours to go down to four days and then three days over time. He replied, and I kid you not, NO, they had done so much to support me with promotions and raises that I couldn’t possibly need anymore. So I replied that I quit. I knew that company would never change.

My life mission every day is to maximize sunshine. Sun maxing, as I call it. I am only writing this blog because it is cloudy today.

After I gave my notice, they begged me to stay. Everyone else who had quit gave two weeks, but because I was the LAST experienced Account Manager left, they knew they would flounder and possibly lose my multimillion dollar client if I left that quickly. I agreed to stay six weeks until they found someone. But I would work part time. In the end, I was working 50-60 hour weeks to train everyone before I left and I stayed eight weeks. It cooked me. I didn’t want all my hard work to be washed away and for my client or my team to feel like I had abandoned them. And I did feel bad for my replacement, so I did try to help them with the transition. I did another roll out in that 6 weeks too.

I would never do that again. They didn’t care about me at all. Like zero. I told them I had pneumonia twice and they could care less. They only saw dollar signs. The money I was making them or about to lose them. And the consequence of all of this?

After quitting, I started to fill the house with flowers. My mission is JOY, pure joy and beauty and fun. So Joy and sun-maxing.

I can’t even think about stepping foot in that office. I am allergic to it. And I didn’t realise how much that level of stress was impacting my relationships with my spouse and kids. I was ALWAYS frustrated with my kids. They were too messy or too loud. And my reaction was to snap. And I just ignore my spouse. Fully. There was NO joy. If we did a family trip (when I was still working) I would be checking messages and struggled to truly relax and have fun. And I would dread returning to work Monday morning. I was so scared about getting pneumonia again and I felt like it was only a cold away from coming back.

Fast forward to today. It has been three months since I quit and I actually don’t think I am normal yet. I feel like I am still a bit on edge and missing the fun in a lot of situations. But I am also making an effort to work on it. I play more games with my kids, I cook treats for fun for the family, I work on kart wheels and hand stands, we eat dinner outside, and I go mountain biking with them. Oh, and I hosted a tea party for mom’s and I planned an upcoming bike event called Bikes, Blooms, and Booch. Isn’t that fun? And I am trying to be bring the homestead back to life, with getting ducklings and planting a garden again.

I think over time, the joy will completely come back, but it takes time.

And, oh, I completely forgot to mention, I will need to generate some sort of income at some point or go back to the corporate world. At this point, I can’t touch corporate life for a long time. I think that was a good lesson on setting boundaries and what kinds of companies I would like to work for, and which to watch out for.

I also firmly believe that when I work for a company, I am making that company money, and with over two decades of experience to my name, I am thinking that I have some skills to generate my own income. At least I hope so. I also feel completely unskilled at creative endeavors, so all of that experience may not apply to this new realm of work. So this is where we shall just have to see how things go after a few weeks, months, years, if I have that much time.

After realizing burn out is a real thing, and I almost think that company was borderline abusive for pushing me to that point, I have met other people that have been through the same thing. You can say they are different stories, but they are actually all the same: millennial becomes extremely skills at their job, their employer capitalizes on this and piles on the work, some sort of health issue arises (likely due to stress) and they quit. And it is in droves. DROVES! some quit with a plan, and some don’t. But if you search for corporate burn out on any social media platform, you will loads of people leaving because of burnout. I hope employers learn from this. And actually, I hope that employees do too. I think Gen Z already knows work is just work and they are not trying to be over achievers and take over the world, and while it can be annoying at times, maybe it is a super power because they are protecting their peace (that’s a new thig I say.) And they are smart enough to know that the only person who will look out for them IS them. Maybe now more people are hearing about this burnout, they can also protect their peace and set boundaries, like when three coworkers quit and I absorbed their work, I probably should have said NO. Instead of trying to prove something or think they would figure it out for me.

And here we are. Burn out is real. And now I know what it is. And I am just going to keep going. xoxo