Current state

Burnout is a constant topic by institutional leadership, in tone-deaf ways that still talk about it as an employee problem as if it’s our fault. I associate with a lot of Class A people – those who are internally motivated, going to always do the best that they can, and they care about people too. If they are constantly failing to meet expectations of the system, then it’s the system that’s set up wrong, there’s nothing wrong with these people, no matter how much they accept leadership’s blame and internalize that it’s their own fault.

My state

This weekend was hard. Like many, I’m trying to manage too much. And persistence is my superpower, so I was persisting – until on Saturday morning I had too much negative feedback from my household. That was the straw that broke this camel’s emotional back, and I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Which, given I have a kind and loving household who just hadn’t realized I was that close to a breaking point (because super power of persisting meant it wasn’t showing on the outside), meant my household also had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. According to my youngest, the worst day of the year, which given the way the bad days of this year has gone from their perspective is a very bad day indeed.

How we got to this state

Sunday I needed to set some of my stuff down, un-done, and take some time for myself, where I was not trying to take care of work or family. I still had to be present for putting out sibling arguments, I still had to be present to make sure the house didn’t burn down, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything “productive.”

I love to read. I would normally be finishing at least one book a week, probably juggling multiple books simultaneously. Right now I had zero books I was mid-way through, to give you an idea of how much I’ve had to be focusing on other needs.

Fortunately, on the recommendation of my always informed sister, I had this book waiting for me on my book pile. In fact, it was one of only 2 books on my pile, a rarity for me, which made it a pretty easy choice. And it was a fortuitous book to be present on this weekend when my burnout levels had just been aggressively shoved in my face: Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen, which is available through the Rochester Public Library.

So Sunday, Monday evening, and Tuesday evening, I devoured Can’t Even. It started off a little slow, but as of Chapter 3, where they start talking about “College at Any Cost”, I was hooked on the book (warning, some of the language isn’t child-levels of clean). Not because I’d had quite that same experience, as I’m not quite a millennial, but because my multi-age parent groups have been discussing regularly during the college application/decision letter/acceptance season about how impossible colleges have become compared to when we parents were going through the process as teenagers ourselves. So this is high on my tracking list as my own kids grow up.

Chapter 5 was a great historical perspective, “How Work Got So Shitty”. And chapter 6, “How Work Stays So Shitty,” talks more about how people are “on” all of the time. If you are my age, and your parents are already retired, they don’t grasp this at all. From their perspective, yes work is nobody’s favorite, but one member goes and gets that job done, they are reasonably rewarded in ways that cover their whole family’s needs, plus there’s someone at home taking care of all of the child and home care things. If you are a member of the retiree crowd, please don’t be leaning on your children and grandchildren, telling them how they just need to work harder, try harder, do better – they don’t need you thinking worse of them too.

Chapter 7, “Technology Makes Everything Work,” outlines both how smartphones are constantly demanding our attention with mini-rewards and other addicting behaviors, and how they are hurting our productivity, our emotional state, our ability to spend time with friends.

Chapter 9, “The Exhausted Millennial Parent,” was exactly the final piece I needed to help put perspective on how I’d felt this weekend. Juggling, juggling, juggling, not able to see that the juggling pattern is breaking, until it all falls down around you – and you feel horrible because it affects all of your household full of people you love. Add some additional stretcher: being a parent of special needs, having switched to homeschooling because of COVID, or any other additional add-on, and the number of balls juggled (and inevitably dropped along with the levels of guilt when it happens) only gets worse.

Summary

This is another book that I’ll be insisting my kids read before they go to college, pursue a career, or get a professional job. And if you know you are a high performer but you are constantly feeling like you’re failing, especially if you are a mom, read this book so you too can gain some bigger picture perspective. You aren’t failing, our culture is failing you.