Breaking the burnout cycle
breadcrumbs on work and life
I’m always tired. I never feel inspired anymore. I don’t know what I’m working for. I want more but I don’t know what I want, or where to start. It takes so much energy to just get through each day. Will I ever feel like myself again?
This is what I heard in my head, all the time, for the last two years. I knew I was burnt out but having a name for it only fueled my sense of hopelessness. I knew I was unhappy at my job, felt resentful towards it even, but I tried to be light and positive on Zoom meetings. Because what else could I do?
There was a cost, of course. My silent bitterness, exhaustion, and disappointment were not as quiet as I thought. They were very loud to my boyfriend who, because he cares about me, told me it was affecting him and us. I believe his words are what motivated me to break the burnout cycle. I don’t know if I could have done it for myself, but I wanted to do it for him.
“You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.”
I came across this quote recently, it’s by Marianne Williamson, and if there’s a secret to breaking the burnout cycle, this is it.
Diagnosing my burnout was a prerequisite for breaking the cycle. The first meaningful step I took was accepting responsibility for it. I can’t fully convey how painful and embarrassing it was to admit that I was disappointed in myself. For years, I’d been settling for a way of living that was far less than what I wanted for myself. And my disappointment about this was fueling my burnout. I’d let the insecurities and fears of people around me limit my own sense of agency. I was desperately looking for permission to break away, but deep down I also knew I’d never get it from the very people who were too afraid to give themselves the same permission.
I started wondering, why did I stay in this cycle? I’ve thought a lot about this, and here’s what I know. Even though it felt bad, it was so much easier to be mad and miserable at my job. We trick ourselves into thinking it feels better to be a passive victim than it is to take charge of our lives and face spectacular failure once in a while. Because failure is inevitable when you have agency and freedom.
I knew that to feel better, I needed to quit my job, but I still had no idea what I wanted to do instead. This is when I worked on building a set of personal principles and values that I could anchor myself to. I started looking for people who were living and thinking about life in ways that inspired me. I read a lot. Books became the scaffolding for my new way of thinking: I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Crying in H Mart, I’m So Effing Tired, Hardwiring Happiness, The Places That Scare You.
These books helped me pose new questions to myself. My reactions to these questions became my conviction that I wanted more for myself: Why did I have to work full time? I’d never work full-time again, unless I was working for myself. Who says I need to go back to school? If I took a job, I’d get more than a paycheck — I’d make sure I was getting paid to learn. Why am I working so hard if I saw the toll it was taking on my health? I’d reserve time to rest every day, every week, and for a significant portion of the year. I’d build a life around trying new things and working on projects that gave me a reason to travel to other places — not to escape my reality, but to enrich it. I would value simplicity, minimalism, growth, and experimentation.
With these principles and values, I found the courage to bet on my longstanding interest in sourdough baking. I let go of the most money I may ever make in my life, because I needed purpose more than I needed the illusion of financial stability. I started working at a bakery, making $15 an hour, and I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time.
“It ain’t much, but it’s honest work.”
I feel tremendous appreciation for my boyfriend, Jonathan, who already lived by a lot of the principles that are still new and uncomfortable to me. I only see it clearly in hindsight, but I needed someone to tell me I could do this, that I’d been choosing unhappiness, but I could choose something else.
With Jonathan’s support, I explored the terrifying idea of leaving my job. We talked about what held me back the most. It was the fear that I’d simply lost the ability to do hard things, that there wasn’t anything else I really wanted to do, and the possibility that after wasting time and money, I’d return to a corporate job with my tail between my legs.
Hearing that fear, Jonathan knew I needed to face it head on. I couldn’t imagine how it could possibly feel better to get up at 4:30am and bust my ass for ten hours straight, but he was right: I needed to show myself how different it could be to live in line with my values. I didn’t need to be coddled or comforted. I needed to do the complete opposite of what had burned me out. To see for myself that there are other ways of being. Jonathan and I talk a lot about “honest work”. It started as a joke (and before that a meme), but it stuck with us because we saw some truth in it — honest work, work that’s in line with your values and gives you a sense of purpose and connection, no matter how difficult, really does feel better.
Which takes me to where I am today: working part-time at a bakery, reclaiming my attention span (something I really felt eroding as I anxiously chased notifications across my screens with no real attachment to any of them), and meeting a new version of myself. This isn’t a forever job. Maybe it’s a new career, and maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t matter, because the goal is to follow my curiosity while I rest from the overthinking that kept me trapped in perpetual burnout. By design, there’s no pressure for my bakery job to offer me growth or opportunity. Instead, I’m unlearning the attachment to jobs that kept me in a burnout cycle.
And here’s what this new way of being feels like: The sharp vinegar scent of sourdough starter, pausing as I mix dough to watch the sunrise turn distant mountains pink, being thirstier than I’ve ever been in my life, muscle aches, long showers, falling asleep on the couch at 9pm. And a sparkle of pride when people ask me what I do.
If this letter resonates with you, I want you to know that this journey took me the better part of a year. Throughout that time, I journaled almost every day. Here are some of the prompts that were most helpful for me:
How am I feeling today? Why am I feeling that way?
What would need to be different for my life to feel good to me?
What do I want to have accomplished a year from now? How do I want to feel a year from now?
How am I being unking towards myself, and how can I be more kind?
What did I read or hear today that stayed with me?
What am I curious about lately?
How am I spending my time? Does it feel good? What do I want to be doing more or less of?
What do I feel afraid of? What do I feel excited about?
Wishing you well,
Amy