Burnt-Out BeBee (My Burnout Story).

As my inaugural post on here, I wanted to repost my burnout story that I wrote last year. Hitting my burnout is truly what catapulted me into this incredible journey of learning and self-discovery and so it deserves some space here. Thanks for reading!

My Journey To Burnout Breakdown (aka. BB-D Day)

In order to get to my burnout break-down (and I promise it’s worth sticking around to that doozy part of the story), I have to give you, my dear reader, a quick flash summary of how I got to March 2022 (aka. “BB-D” Day)...

Once upon a time..

Just kidding. Here’s what you need to know (aka. The Cole’s Notes):

• Creative soul who drank the corporate “kool-aid” early on in her 20’s as a “temporary solution” (*cough* 7 years *cough*) to a short term financial need.

Oh she's trying to shine through (creative me). Peep the purple-ish hair and sparkle flats...but she's already fading away (and this was only near the beginning).

• During that time, this creative soul climbed the corporate ladder with her engrained work ethic and organisational prowess. As a bi-product, she consistently convinced herself that her creativity (and those related pursuits) were not worth the energy and time…(I’m sure you can guess where this story is going…) as her “big fancy money making job” didn’t leave her with much energy and/or time.
  

• Eventually our trapped creative soul got up the nerve to sever the proverbial “corporate-cord” (so scary) to go out on her own and start her own business in…marketing. Aka, the closest “corporate” business she could run that allowed her some creativity and the ability to earn income. This in the hopes that she would have an “expected healthy balance” between being creative and successful. (P.s. Note the quotations...hint hint).
  

• As some readers can perhaps identify with, when you have the potential to earn “unlimited” income (“unlimited” in terms of just your own time and energy) what tends to happen is that you push yourself to make as much as possible. And when you get there (to that next income milestone), instead of saying “yay!! I did that and I’m amazing” *pats self on back*, you say “Pft…I can do better”. And so the pattern is created.
  

• This pattern never leads anywhere good…

And so, this is where our creative soul (aka. me, myself and I) found herself in March of 2022...

A pretty accurate representation of what my burnout looked like (bad skin, constantly exhausted, ever in need of "backpack snuggles").

Scene opens with Kelsey and Kris (<-- Ride or Die to Kelsey), sitting in their car. Kelsey has picked up Kris from work, she’s on the bluetooth with a very “out of alignment/energy drain” client (more on this later) about an event that has been causing a boat-load of stress. They’re running late for something…? More likely not, just Kelsey’s typical on-going underlying anxiety about being late for something at all times (isn’t this normal?).

Kelsey starts backing up the car, oblivious to the fact that there is a commercial truck parked right behind her. The car sensors are going off, the commercial truck is clearly on the backup camera and in all the mirrors, Kelsey’s client is talking at her, Kris starts yelling, and all Kelsey does is keep backing up…right into the flippin’ truck.

At that moment, Kelsey broke down. With that literal jolt back into reality, she looked around and realized that her present reality was…not going to sustain her for much longer.

After ensuring no damage to the other truck (none, it was a huge truck vs. a car and “Luckily” there was only minor damage to our sweet bat-mobile) and driving home to a brigade of very valid “WTF is going on with you?” questions from Kris, Kelsey made it home through tears of frustration to exit the car with a flourish and a dramatic, but bold, claim of:

“I’m a failure. I fail at everything. I’m just going to go pick up dog shit because at least I’m capable of succeeding at that.”

Yup - not a very proud moment for me looking back.

But, amongst the cringey-ness of that statement, even I had enough wherewithal to say to myself “well that’s a tad bit dramatic don’t you think”?

With that “reality check” I was able to come into my own personal awareness that I was one sad, lonely, stressed out, burnt out human being. That one moment was the kick-off point for me to take ownership of my situation and figure out whatever I needed to figure out in order to change course and take charge of my own happiness and well-being.

Me holding on with everything I had in order to make it to "rest time". The eyes are a dead giveaway to how hard I'm holding on to just "be".

There's light at the end of the tunnel (even if it's a long and seemingly never-ending tunnel).

*pinky promise*

And so started a continual evolution of “decluttering” my life (scaling down my business, taking a pause from anything that was draining me that I was capable of stepping away from, etc.) in order to create space (both internal and external spaces), to free up time/energy/mental bandwidth to focus on what I truly wanted to be doing with this season of my life.

Through that process, I was able to devote more of myself to learning, listening, watching, and reflecting…on anything and everything that was in my life that was:

• Making me happy & bringing me joy

• Causing me stress or draining my energy

• Missing from my life that I wanted to add in

• Waiting for me to rediscover and redefine a “Kelsey 2.0”

It has been this intentional journey, the learning, the podcasts, the books, the conversations about shared experience, and everything else that have helped me make the connection that there are SO many people going through something similar.

I definitely don't have the "cure to burnout" but I've learned some stuff over the course of my journey and I feel like sharing. So that's part of what this blog is about. Sharing what I've learned. But also a creative outlet that's just for me - to keep the burnout at bay.

Grateful to have you here.

Onwards and madly we go...

- KC