This week’s Failing Publicly is a guest post from the wonderful Esther Newman, a freelance features and fashion journalist. She looks back at how she found herself burnt out less than a year after graduating. Find Esther on Twitter and Instagram - but first, enjoy her honest account of burnout from freelancing.
The first time I think I truly recognised that I was burnt out was on a plane in 2019, on my way to Spain. As the air stewards reminded us where to find the exits and how to successfully put on our air masks, I abruptly started to well up. Watching the green and grey of the English countryside slide away through blurry eyes, I wasn’t thinking about how excited I was for my holiday, a week of spring sun, sea and sangria. Instead, I felt guilty, my mind fixated on the unchecked tasks still left on my to-do list.
Burnout has become a common term today - we read personal essays, listen to experts warning us of the physical and mental dangers, and are glad that it doesn’t affect us. I had always considered burnout a properly grown-up, corporate thing; something that happened to people who wore suits to work, enjoyed tasty pay rises at the end of each year, and who spent their days moving numbers around on Excel spreadsheets.
Imagine my surprise when I found myself burnt out in my first year as a graduate, fresh from my MA, wide-eyed and desperate to climb the media career ladder.
At first, the signs weren’t obvious. I was commuting four hours (and sometimes more) a day to London, waking up for a packed 6.44 am commuter train, followed by a mad dash across the capital. Coupled with a full day of work, it’s no wonder I was tired beyond belief - my weekends were then spent recovering for the week ahead.
Not one to waste time, I spent the commute wisely, dedicating this small slice of ‘me time’ to all the other self-improvement work a young journalist needs to do: staying up to date on news, pop culture and social media; reading viral essays and NYT bestsellers; watching whatever Twitter deemed important that week; writing and sending out pitches that would never be answered. I was ‘on’ all the time and it was draining.
At work, so eager to impress, I often worked through lunches to tick everything off my list. Perhaps unsurprisingly it was all too much and I often found myself locked in the staff toilets, crying silently whilst mentally admonishing myself for getting something wrong or missing a deadline. In a marketing company where the goalposts for projects moved constantly - a symptom of the industry at large - I constantly felt myself scrambling to keep up, ever the quintessential perfectionist.
It was on that holiday to Spain that I finally acknowledged the pressure I was unnecessarily internalising. It was also when I made the decision to be kinder to myself.
Over a year later, I have a far healthier relationship with work. I won’t lie, it probably took me going through that experience - and many others in different workplaces - to understand better how much time and energy I should be giving to my job and how much I should be keeping in reserve for myself.
I now understand better how companies both small and large operate and that my performance in them also relies on others. If things go wrong or are pushed back, it’s (most often) not all on my shoulders.
I’ve learnt to set and respect my own professional boundaries, to always have a full lunch hour away from my desk and that often, my growing to-do list can survive another day or two.
Sure, things like this are hard to remember in lockdown when my office switches between my dining and living rooms, but when we do head back into the office I’m confident I’ll be a much better, calmer worker for it.
The most important lesson? I’ve learnt that my true ‘me time’ should be spent however I want it to, not in a constant quest for career advancement. For example, right after I finish writing this essay I’ll probably go binge some more Married at First Sight: Australia, because we all deserve time off as well as on, no matter how ‘new’ we are.
Thank you, Esther, for sharing your story! Burnout is something that so many freelancers struggle with, and talking about it more is sure to help people acknowledge when their work/life balance gets out of control. It’s important to remember, no matter how much we love our jobs, that work is only a part of our lives. Keeping things in balance is good for us and our work; no one can produce good work when they’re exhausted from taking on too much.
My biggest aim for this newsletter is for people to get more comfortable with sharing their mistakes and realising that being imperfect is part of being human.
If you’ve got a past Freelancing Fail that you would also like to share, this is your opportunity to share it with the group. You can either write your story as a guest post or simply submit the information to be shared.
It can be anonymous if you prefer and it certainly does not have to have a shining lesson of redemption. Sometimes, we just do stupid things - and that’s okay!
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