I was at my favorite conference, this year in Denver. I was primed with the following information as I was embarking on this trip:
1: At the last national one, in Seattle that time, I had just left my job with community mental health and was so burnt out that all I could do was surrender, and it ended up being one of the best conferences I had ever attended (see how we’re in trouble with expectations already?)
2: At the last regional one, last year, I was dealing with work issues and was not as present as I wanted
3: Work hounded me literally as I ran through Charlotte NC’s airport to catch my connecting flight. I literally almost called someone and yelled at them who under no circumstances deserved it. (I also lost an AirPod down a grate. WHO PUTS GRATES INSIDE. I will always hate this airport for more reasons than just this, but WE ARE OFFICIALLY SWORN ENEMIES FOREVER, CHARLOTTE AIRPORT.)
4: Before two Fridays ago, I was the only one responsible for running payroll for my company.
5: I worked LITERALLY until the time I had to leave for the airport on the day I left for my conference. I then opened up my laptop the second I got settled at the airport.
Ok. You’re fully primed.
I get to my hotel at 1am Denver time and shower immediately, because COVID and also I just do that after I fly. Planes are gross. Hop into bed around 2 (so if you’re keeping up with the math, it’s 4am according to my circadian rhythm, so I’d been up for 23 hours) and plan to get up at 8 so that I can get to registration and start my favorite conference, and run payroll first, which I do on Thursday mornings.
Nope! Payroll system was down.
I contact my person at our payroll company, who is apologetic and also has no idea what’s going on. I keep trying. Then I run out and run a few errands because it “should be back in just a couple of hours”. I come back, still nothing.
Payroll was due by the end of the day and it was quickly approaching.
For those counting, I hadn’t been over to the conference yet, and it was about 2pm MT.
At that point I was like “ok. If it’s down and won’t be back for a few hours, I’ll go find a yarn shop,” and that’s exactly what I did.
Came back, still nothing.
Cancelled dinner with my colleagues.
Still nothing.
8:30pm, it finally ran.
By this point, I had come to a few realizations:
1. I was in no state to be around people
2. I can’t detach from work and that has suddenly turned from a Big Problem to a Herculean Problem
3. I need to leave Denver as soon as possible.
I still had a presentation. So, I changed my flight to leave directly after it and got in around 1:30 on Saturday morning instead of what was supposed to be 24 hours later. In this time, I sent an email to my three most trusted people at work and said, “Something is changing or I quit. Literally quit.”
I spent my entire flight home planning. I let my staff know that I would not be working the whole next week. I needed some time off, genuine time off, and I also needed to figure this out.
I came back to NH and had meetings. Strategized. Planned. Got organized. Most importantly, rested.
For the first time, possibly ever, I went into a make-it-or-break-it moment in my work determined to make it better because this particular job is worth saving. I was determined to change my circumstances and not me because that was what needed to change and for the first time ever, I was in a position to change them instead of quitting.
So that’s exactly what I did. It was probably my most significant moment of self-care since becoming a counselor.
What do I hope this looks like?
Cutting my schedule down by at least half.
Getting my weekends back.
Staying caught up.
Focusing on the things that actually matter.
This whole week has been offloading my responsibilities, and I have to tell you, it has been nothing short of terrifying. Put another way: Trusting other people is terrifying. But, I’ve gotten back into the habit of leaning into that feeling. What’s this really about? Why am I so scared of this? I trust people all the time in my job. I have to. In order to let people grow, I have to trust them to do the work. So why is this such a sticky wicket? I sat back and really actually listened to my anxiety instead of just indulging it. The answer was, of course, not rational. Something about patterns repeating and my needs will not get met and my business will fail. None of it was rational.
I’m still sitting with this and now that I know what my anxiety is saying, I can continue to train that midbrain, because there is quite literally no evidence that my admin staff is not trustworthy. It’s already working, by the way.
The reason? They have better boundaries with my anxiety than I do because they’re not experiencing it. They probably spend more time telling me they’ve got what I’ve asked of them and that I can take my hands out of it now please than they should, but that’s already getting better. It’s an adjustment, to be sure, but one that’s been necessary for over a year.
Then I went to this training this weekend. I’ve been to it before and can always count on getting a lot out of it, because the presenters are always amazing. This year was a bit different because there was a new presenter, so I was a tiny bit nervous, but I trust the people putting on the training to have good people presenting the information.
It was a game-changer. I was present for the whole fucking thing. I was engaged with the presenter and the material, I had hugely important moments of insight, and though I am going back to work today and I am super tired, I go back armed with really important ways to either tweak or validate what I’m doing and how I approach things. I feel more professionally confident than I have since I opened this business, and my ideals are as strong as ever.
Most importantly, though, I’m unstuck. I was in some really difficult and toxic patterns, and because of my position, no matter how much I talked about them, the change had/has to come from me and I have to be ok with that. I have to constantly reassure myself that the onus of this change being on me is for my own well-being and that this is how I’m breaking the toxic cycle of taking all of the responsibility for all of the wrong things, and that this isn’t like the patterns in my personal life where I’m the one doing all the work because no one else is - that’s not true here.
I feel better. I finally feel better.
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