Burnout can happen to anyone

For as long as I can remember, I have been the person who says yes to every extracurricular activity, never wanting to disappoint or pass up an opportunity.  In elementary school?  Soccer, Girl Scouts, Conservation Frontiers, dance classes, piano lessons… and the pattern only continued.  Though I quit a few things along the way (um, sports), I continued to be interested in everything.  And I mean everything.

Middle school and high school brought forays into Science Olympiad, math clubs and competitions, musicals, extracurricular orchestra groups, political groups, German club, even golf.  I wasn’t perfect at all of them, but I kept adding things in, never being happy with just 3 or 4 commitments.

And though I resigned from a few things occasionally, the trend continued into college.  Let’s just say that there is not much room for a social life when you are majoring in chemical engineering and are overly involved in multiple extracurriculars.  My senior year should have been full of making memories with friends who now live elsewhere and reveling in the last months of freedom before starting a full-time job, but there weren’t many moments to relax, between design projects and serving as president of my university’s collegiate SWE section.

It was a whirlwind until the very end, full of so many stressful nights, inadequate sleep, and feeling as if I would never catch up.  My only break came at the very end of senior year, when I had zero remaining responsibilities and only one final.  After several days of spending time with friends, I remember realizing that this was what many people experienced for four years straight, and that it suddenly made sense that college was touted as being non-stop fun for four years.

I thought I’d leave the hectic schedules behind in college.  I figured that of all of my interests, only a few things would work out.  So I kept trying and pulling for new things that piqued my interests, taking on every opportunity that came my way.  My logic was that so many of these commitments were small, so it couldn’t be too bad, right?  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So, managing eight different commitments, in addition to a full-time job.  Sounds crazy, right?  Yep.  And just a few days before Valentine’s Day, the unexpected happened – I started dating a truly amazing guy.

I’ve been trying to do it all these last few months — great job, great guy, and enough leadership positions for a small army.  And after far too many stressful days and tearful breakdowns, I am finally understanding that someone is hurting from all this – me.  I have slowly built things up to focus on helping others, creating events, developing new outreach tools, that I have completely forgotten to leave any time for just Kate.  My motivation in every aspect of my life has slowly been waning, and I have felt overwhelmed and burned out for weeks now.  Even on my “nights off”, I am sending e-mails, rushing to do laundry, and collapsing into bed at 9:30 or 10 – only to start all over again at 5:30 the next morning. I couldn’t have realized this on my own.

I couldn’t be more grateful to Kevin for helping me to finally see that being busy won’t make me happy.  What will truly make me happy is spending time with those I love – my family, my friends, Kevin… and having relaxing time for myself. While all this was going on, I’ve set things in motion to increase one of my commitments substantially – perhaps not this year or the next, but definitely in the short term future.  How could I possibly expect to increase my involvement in one place, while already being so overextended and burned out?

Well, as the popular saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Yesterday, I made a list of everything that is going on in my life, and today, I sent e-mails for three different commitments, declaring my intent to resign this summer.  And I decided to resign from a fourth activity in November – that email is already drafted in Word, and I’ll just have to click “send” in the fall.  And slowly, but surely, I will have time for myself, for the first time in my life.  Time to get back in shape, time to decorate my new apartment (just a few more weeks), and time to spend with the people who I love most.

I am not perfect, and I don’t have to do everything.  Most opportunities are not once-in-a-lifetime, and even if they are, my faith and my relationships with others are so much more important.  And for once, I am going to make the important things my top priority.

Partway through writing this, I wondered whether I wanted to post something so personal.  This really is a struggle that I have always faced, and I know that it’s not surprising to anyone who knows me well.  But I want to be accountable, and I want to go through with this.  I know that there is still a lot of progress to be made, but I know I can do it, with so many wonderful supporters by my side.

Kate