I had the first panic attack I’d had in years on Christmas Day, about half an hour after putting my daughter to bed. I thought that it was just the stress of the holiday season finally letting itself out, but when the panic kept dragging me under for weeks that bled into months, I knew something else was going on.
Even now, I haven’t had a panic attack in a while, but my anxiety is still higher than I would like it to be and it has lead to some “charming” new quirks as I try to work through them. It’s taken a lot of therapy, journaling, yoga, meditation, time outside, acupuncture, Ativan, and even quitting caffeine to get me on the path back to something more like normal. I’ve pretty much had to make self care and rest my second full-time job.
As an aside, I had my first decaf iced coffee in an exceptionally long time yesterday, and, my God, I almost died from how good it was. It’s the little things, people.
Anyway.
After a lot of talking with my therapist, I realized that this wasn’t just the comedown from a stressful holiday season. I had been slowly building up to burn out since before I found out I was pregnant (which, for those keeping track at home, was 2018), and then got put on the fast track with the pandemic. I loved my job in archives, but I felt stressed and unsupported most of the time; it had gotten to the point where the joy and pride I felt no longer outweighed the pressure I was under, especially once I became a mom. And then came the pandemic, adjusting to work from home, having that ripped out from under me by return to work policies despite the Delta wave, waiting for an under 5 vaccine to protect my daughter, changing jobs, and then just the normal stresses of parenting a young child. Because global pandemic aside, tantrums still happen, we still had to potty train, and we still had all the normal childhood illnesses to rip through the house, just made more stressful by the fact that everyone of them also required a COVID test. Oh and plus all of this. *gestures vaguely at the world*
I’m starting to feel more like myself, but I know I have a long way to go. Burnout takes a long time to recover from. There are days where I am completely wiped out, where I have to fight panic and exhaustion more than others. But I feel like I can begin to feel solid ground under my feet again. I’m adjusting to my new job, with a manager and company that do good work and are good to their employees. My daughter got her first COVID shot two weeks ago. And I’m finally starting to feel inspired again, to write, to paint, to cook, to explore new ideas and maybe not just watch Jane the Virgin and Gilmore Girls on repeat for the fifty-eleventh time.
So I decided to come back to the blog, with a fresh start. If you’ve been a regular reader, well, firstly I’m sorry if you’ve been checking here for there to be nothing new for like a year. But also, I’ve decided to get rid of my old posts and start fresh. I wouldn’t suggest burnout to anyone, but I can at least say that it has really helped reset my perspective, and I want this space to reflect that. Hopefully you, and some others, one day, will want to come along for the ride.