Burnout or Seeing the Light

When I think back to when I was doing my MBA, I was working full-time at a job that was pretty demanding and going to school full-time technically even though it was just in the evenings and on the weekends and doing a lot of class work in between. I can't imagine now trying to do that same thing, that grueling work-school-sleep cycle. Now when I get home from work I can barely do anything but watch TV and sometimes make dinner for myself. I'd

like to work out. I'd like to write. I'd like to do other things. But I can't seem to bring myself to do those things until the weekend, usually on Sunday, after decompressing from the work week with a lazy Saturday. I used to hike! I kind of hated it, but I loved the bragging rights and the pictures from my hikes.

I think part of the problem was that I had time to relax when I was done with school. I gave myself that time after my MBA to figure out what I wanted to do. And, the time just filled itself with less and less desire to be productive. More recently, I went on a 16-day cruise through the Panama Canal. I knew that I was lucky having had the opportunity to not have to work for that period of time and having plenty of money to do it. I enjoyed my cruise so much, I can't fathom not doing it. But now, all I want to do is return to that cruise and return to that balcony and that miniature life system. Life was so simple on the cruise ship; we knew what we liked and we didn't typically want to go out to the finer dining establishments so we basically just went down to the buffet whenever we were hungry. Jaiman could sleep in and that was okay with me. I would either go for a run, go for a swim or just sit outside on our balcony and read. I enjoyed my mornings. And then when Jaiman got up, we could watch TV, we could go explore on shore if we were docked, or play trivia downstairs, and we would enjoy ourselves and then come back to the room and return to napping, watching TV, reading or whatever else we wanted to do. Even during that time when I was preparing to come back to work I was enjoying myself because I had that leisurely time to sit and think and prepare myself. Now that I'm back at work for what I was preparing for, I wish I just had that time back. I can't wait for the day to retire and be able to sleep in, read, exercise without a time limit and be able to do whatever I want to do. It's almost as if I hadn't taken that vacation, I would be in a better state. Having had that vacation now and knowing what I'm missing out on by working all the time I'm now wishing that I had that instead.

My weight has been on an increasing trajectory for years, even with various levels of effort and different initiatives and focuses to get healthy - I will often lose some small but not insignificant amount of weight, 10 or 15 pounds, and then gain it back and then some when I'm "over" the effort. Such that I am worse off now, even exercising and eating marginally well, then when I was gorging myself two years ago, and that was worse then five years ago, etc. In part, I chock it up to my work stress translating to stress eating, not wanting to exercise, and not having sufficient time to make healthier choices. But of course, I wasn't exactly losing weight on the cruise, which was the closest approximation I have to a utopian experience, because I literally had a buffet of every kind of cuisine to choose from, and even when I ate salads and nutritional foods, I supplemented them with pizza and ice cream and whatever else tempted me that day. Even when we did go to the fancier restaurants, whether they were the included or upcharge ones, we didn't eat less, just more of it with less variety.

I struggle, then, with what it is I really want out of life. I often fantasize over ways to make exercise easier, more ingrained as part of my daily life instead of a separate chore to fuss over, and likewise how to make it easier to eat healthy so that I do it more often. But I think the underlying desire is really just that I want to be healthy (read: thin, not like a size 0 but like a size 8), and I don't want to have to stick to any routine or any particular diet, because I know those fail. More broadly, I think I like having a purpose at work, and I think I enjoy the work, i.e. the problem solving and designing of new solutions and analyzing data, but I dread going to work each day. So it begs the question, if I enjoy what I do, then why don't I spring out of bed to go do it every day? I know I hate the politics and unreasonable demands of my boss and the stupidity I sometimes have to crush. But are those the things that make work so dreadful? Or are those just the worst parts that come to mind? Is it the hours? The endless meetings? What makes work suck?

I sometimes contemplate, without success, what I will do when I am retired, and imagine my retirement coming sooner than later, i.e. age 45 rather than in my 60's. That's just 9 years away at this point, although I still feel like I'm in my 20's sometimes. I put myself on that cruise ship and recall the simple pleasure of reading on the balcony and sleeping in til 7 or so. If I had the money to stop working now and live comfortably for the rest of my life, what would I do a month from now? I mean, obviously, I would have to decompress for some time after I leave my last job. But then what? I would travel frequently, but I couldn't travel all the time, that's too expensive and frankly, exhausting. I would read and write, surely. Would I go back to school? That sounds exhausting. Would I try teaching more? Also a lot of work. Would I melt into my couch until I become one with it and watch TV like a vegetable for the rest of my life? Maybe - and that doesn't sound like what I really want.

I guess the real issue is that it feels like I've lost the motivation and drive I once had. Is that old age? Or is this what people refer to as burnout? How can I be burnt out if I haven't done a shit-ton of stuff outside of work in years? Not to mention, I don't even have kids, with their schedules and needs and demands to contend with.

I may have found the answer, or at least a path towards the answer, in an audiobook I'm listening to simply titled, "Rest" by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. The premise of the book is that rest isn't just something we have to do to avoid burnout, but that rest can be strategically designed to allow our creative juices and production flow more easily. Rest, in this definition, is not just sleep or unwinding on the couch (actually, the latter may be the worst kind of rest), it is anything outside of work and necessary chores. Thus, it does encompass sleeping, as well as napping, but it also could be taking long walks, strenuous exercise or even creative endeavors unrelated to one's work (for example, a scientist painting or a doctor writing a novel). The book also emphasizes how many great minds and people in the top of their fields wake early and do much of their great work first thing in the morning - when their minds are freshest and before the world starts to bother them. There's a great deal of info about the circadian rhythms and how that affects different types of thinking and awareness.

I've know since seemingly forever that I'm a morning person, which seems rare in our society, and yet perhaps part of my issue is that I've not figured out how to use my early start time to my benefit. Lately, I've been using my morning primarily to exercise, because I lack motivation to do so when I come home from work and I know I won't reliably do it if I put it off until the evening. And, to be fair, I do find the walking helps me think through my day and my priorities, which are helpful, and the running helps me burn off stress and re-center myself. But another thing I'm not doing is as much these days is all the creative stuff I used to do - painting, designing / decorating, creating fabric designs for my small business, and, well, writing. I love writing, and I often use it to think through issues, but lately, even if I've started writing something, I haven't finished it, and don't see the point in publishing something unfinished. In fact, I started this post in October 2020. Some mornings, I do wake up with the intention of sitting down to write, and then I start thinking about my budget or work on my taxes and go down rabbit holes. The "Rest" praises having a routine, and that the routine helps your brain to know when it's time to switch into the appropriate gears so that you don't get distracted. I suck at routines, but a lot of this book makes sense.

So I've been working through what my ideal routine would be - now while working and also once retired. If I want to do more writing and other creative things, I think I really need to focus on doing those in the morning when I'm fresh. My rationale is that a workout is mostly going through the motions - once you're in it, it kind of flows, but creative efforts require the fresh mind. However, that begs (or screams) the question, how do I then ensure I'm exercising regularly? I may sound naïve in this thinking, but I do expect this will be easier when retired, because I'll have more of my day to myself, even if I'm working vigorously on pet projects or income-making activities.

The biggest struggle I have is the hours I'm at work - obviously my work is important because it is what provides the income that allows me to live comfortably, travel regularly and enjoy nice things. And I don't foresee industry as a whole moving to a 4-hour workday anytime soon, even though countless studies show that workers are only productive for part of their 8-hour (or 12-hour) days. Indeed, even when I look at minimizing the time I spend at work, whenever I work over 8-hours it does seem to be a productive use of my time. That leads me to believe I have unproductive uses of my time elsewhere, but when I'm trying to manage my calendar and priorities as well as I can, I just don't see a way to eliminate anything. Then I drive home (or if working from home, close my laptop and take a breath), and I'm completely exhausted mentally, and exercise seems like an insurmountable aspiration.

But it hasn't always seemed like that. When I was working at Henkel in Scottsdale, they had a gym in the building. I'd bring my workout clothes and head to the gym after my workday was over, before toiling in the exhausting commute home. Not having to fight traffic before working out, I think, contributed to the success of this routine for me, and also the fact that it had a nice view and I usually had the place to myself or shared it with one or two other colleagues at most. In a way, it was the same kind of escape for me as my morning exercise has been at other times in my life - a lone pursuit with a great view. There was also the additional incentive that traffic would be better the later I left work, so by spending more time in the building - exercising, not working - I'd have an easier time getting home.

When Jaiman and I moved to Connecticut with Henkel, there was a gym at my workplace there as well, but only for employees (i.e. Jaiman couldn't come), and we had a gym in our apartment building. That and the fact that I walked the very short distance to work and back instead of contending with traffic, led to us often working out after work. Again, we usually had the place to ourselves or with only a couple other people around. It didn't have a nice view, but they did have TVs in the gym that were connected to headphone jacks on the treadmills so you could listen in and even control the channels. I liked that gym, and I spent a lot of time on the treadmill listening to my audiobooks (especially since I didn't have a commute to listen to them on).

All this to say, I guess I don't know the answer. If I spend my morning burst of energy on writing and creative pursuits, perhaps I end up getting more of those accomplished, which is what I want, but at the peril of losing my workout routine. Even if I can limit my work hours as much as possible (which for me would be 7:30 to 4:30 at best), that still gets me home around 5, at which time I want to eat dinner and never move again until it's time to go to bed. Since my company doesn't have an on-site gym, I could sign up for a gym that I would drive to and at least then feel the pressure to do my workout before going home. Maybe I'm just making excuses, but I really loathe the idea of paying for a gym when I can have a sufficient workout for free at home (and in a beautiful setting if I walk or run through the park).

I also think about how I should take walks at work, even just walking to the other side of the campus and back would be a good mental break for me and add some steps in my otherwise pretty stationary day. It has only gotten worse with the latest upswing in COVID, we've made just about all of our meetings virtual, which means I'm not even walking to a conference room down the hall or to the next building over anymore; I'm taking all calls at my desk and using the bathroom five feet away and getting water from the dispenser five feet away, taking my lunch at my desk with my own refrigerator (and the microwave is where the water is) and never leaving a ten foot circumference the entire day. So a walk around lunchtime sounds like a reasonable, positive thing to add  to my work day, and yet, I struggle to make or find the time for even that.

I think, as much as I suck at it, it comes down to making a routine and sticking to it. Coming home, I need to change into my workout clothes and just immediately going into workout mode. That would free up my time in the mornings for writing, painting and designing. I also need to limit the distractions on my phone and perhaps use my phone to start spurring the ideas for me to work on instead.

This morning, I focused on my writing instead of my workout, and now need to make sure I do my workout later today. It makes a lot of sense, but will require some effort and getting use to the new routine.