6 months ago, I quit my toxic Google job, hopped in a U-Haul with my dog and moved to a small town to start a new life with my partner.
Sounds equally whimsical and extreme, I'm sure, but I hope you can believe that this explosion of radical change has been a work in progress for a long time.
Apart of me feels like I should fill you in. A little backstory, if you will. There will be time dedicated to that later. I say that with a slight air of confidence. Mostly because I've reached the level in my healing-from-burnout/HFB journey where I feel comfortable expressing myself without the pressure of timelines - again.
I wonder what burnout has robbed you of?
I have been spending a considerable amount of time in a self-healing chrysalis. Originally with the goal of simply trying to endure the brunt of the swampy, grime-like bullshit I was dealing with. Overtime, it became very clear that I could spend all the time I wanted trying to effectively endure as long as I accepted that this use of time was prolonging the pain I was desperate to separate from. I had a lot of healing modalities in constant motion (therapy, plant medicine, nature, medication, etc.) and yet found that I was so inflamed that everything in my life felt like a slap to sunburnt skin. I was irritated, stressed, eating minimally, and disconnected from my creative outlets. Joy was a fleeting experience that was not outweighing the anger bubbling under my surface.
Or so I thought.
I decided that enduring wasn't enough. I needed more than a willpower to endure all that I was faced with.
I needed to destroy something - I fear.
and quickly.
2 years ago, The Anti-Hustle Culture Club came to me - almost like a dream - in the midst of a major internal transformation. I was so sick and tired of feeling sick and tired - and I needed to know that you guys were out there, feeling what I was feeling too. I started this and put a lot of effort into it, in hopes that it could grow - in the way mustard seeds do. But I left it for a while to tend to my own wounds and find the courage to save myself from the misaligned life I was living.
I didn't just quit my Google job because of a crappy boss, I quit as a commitment to never over-extend myself like that again. Never again will I ever be underutilized, overworked, underpaid, and discriminated against in the name of the almighty dollar. Turns out I like myself way too much for that.
And I believe that those series of events needed to happen before I could reach out to you again. I needed to go dark for a while and reclaim everything burnout stole from me. I wouldn't allow this moment, this expression of self, to happen if I did not find the strength to take it all back. My time, my energy, my rest, my desire to be alive and to be a vessel of love.
So here we are, 6 months into life on the other side of Burnout and boy do we have a lot to catch up on. I hope that we can continue using this space for connecting over the commonality of believing that life can be better than the shit we're putting up with. I hope my tales from Uncle Sams Locker (kinda like Davy Jones Locker - but the capitalism version) can provide you with some relief that you're not alone in this fight, life can get better, and you are worth the happiness you seek.
Talk soon friends!
JB
"I want as much self-knowledge as I can get, - let me not be deceived - but self-knowledge isn't the goal I seek. Strength, strength is what I want. Strength not to endure, I have done that, and it has made me weak - but strength to act-" Susan Sontag