A couple of months ago I was handed a project at work. I could have done what was asked and stopped there. But for someone who is always up for a challenge and perfectionist in active recovery, simply doing the project wouldn’t suffice. I wanted to challenge myself to see how far I could take it to see how far it may take me in my career. So, I instead started assigning myself tasks, and I was at my computer from sun up to sun down to the point that my hips starting aching from prolonged sitting.
Several days in a row, I looked at the clock and it said 3:00 PM. I’m good about breakfast, but a 350 calorie meal isn’t enough fuel to think clearly or lift weights for 45 minutes. I had a choice to make. Keep grinding and worry about exercise tomorrow, or stop for fifteen minutes to make a late lunch and work out in the evening.
“A whole 60 minutes of that, when I could get 3 more things done in that hour?!” I chose the productive hour.
I chose it multiple days in a row. The meals I didn’t eat properly and the workouts I skipped spilled into everything else, including my sleep. Right before bed I’d map out the next part of the project. I dreamed about the next day, then about the presentation I’d give two months out, and some nights the dream was the presentation not being good enough.
Did it pay off? Absolutely. I also learned what I’m like when I lock all the way in. I can’t stop thinking about something until it’s done. It’s a great trait, but I’ve discovered what it costs.
I can tell when I cross the line into the place every movie shows us of the character who loses themselves for the gain at work. The healthy version is passion and obsession paired with self-confidence, and I can tuck it away to handle the personal priorities that matter. The unhealthy version is locking myself to something, being anxious over it, being the only thing I can talk about, and not doing anything else.
I’ve been the insufferable one. When I was going after a job, researching and getting into the nitty-gritty of what I’d be doing, it was all I could talk about. I think about the people who can’t have a personality outside their job, who talk about themselves in the third person in relation to it. What are we doing?
The whole goal is freedom. What are we working toward in a job if not the freedom to do whatever we want with our time? Part of that might be working. I like the idea of working out whenever I want during the day, meeting a friend for lunch, running an errand at 1pm o a whim or visiting a new city in the middle of the week. I also want the freedom to keep a rigid schedule if I choose.
I hold the freedom I’m striving for next to the project that cost me my time because the little things I do now are deposits.
I won’t trade sleep, nourishment, or anyone else’s stress that isn’t mine. In corporate America, everything is a fire drill. A group I work with kept needing data, or they need my schedule a month out, because of a meeting or a deal they were pushing. I answered every alarm. I turned work around faster than quality work should take. They wouldn’t touch it for two or three weeks, or they’d tell me they forgot the meeting was next week… not this week. “OOPSIE!” Come… on…
After enough rounds I started delaying my responses. Your fire drill is not mine. Just because I can doesn’t mean I should. Once people consistently show you how they operate, you pivot. The people pleaser in me had to die because I kept stressing myself out for someone who wasn’t considerate of my time. I’m working on letting that shit go.
The latest I’ll communicate with anyone about work is 6:00 PM, and that’s on very special occasions. I love my team, so I’ll always answer them. When a message comes in at 6:01, my heart drops a little and my first instinct is to reply right away. It took me well over a year and a half to fight that. Now I leave it unread and get to it in the morning. If my fingers still reach for it, I take a breath and remind myself that the world will not end and I will not get fired.
I can do this easily at work. Personally, it’s harder.
There are a few people I know I need boundaries with. I’m so used to bending to their expectations, working around their expected poor behavior, and absorbing how they treat the people around me. That’s a sign in and of itself that a boundary needs to go up. I hold a firm line with an employer. It’s taking me longer to hold one with people in my personal life.
Wanting more is not a bad thing at all. No matter how many jealous, unambitious people tell you that it is. I’m working on a personal project that I know will take a lot of time and money. I’m a closeted creative person, and this project is near and dear to the roots of who I am and where I come from. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about, and I pray I can do it justice when we bring it to life.
The ambition in me wants to rearrange my life around it. I also know my pattern: diving in head first at 150 mph and screeching into burnout before I can make it happen. I care about this too much for that. It doesn’t deserve that. It deserves the best of me, so I’ll work on it for however long it takes to give it that.
For now I’m enjoying the process. I’m not letting it make me anxious, or make me feel like someone who can never execute on what they said they would do. That’s why I’m keeping it close to the chest.
We can have both. We just have to reshuffle the cards sometimes and check our priorities. Some seasons my personal life comes first. Other times I can give more to my job because my personal life is going all right.
Every so often I audit my boundaries and my energy to see where I can give more and where I need to step back before I’m running too fast in a direction that isn’t sustainable.
I’ve landed on this: nothing is ever that deep. You need to do a good job and finish your work. The above and beyond doesn’t need to seep into your personal life, because once it does, you start to break down in both places. Find your limits and operate within them. Don’t forget that the goal is life well lived, not a life you had to make work for everyone else.
♡ Syd