A Different Kind of First Day
Artwork by Morgan Harper Nichols
Tomorrow is my first day back to work after six months of burnout leave. Countless people have asked me if I feel ready to go back to work. The truth is that I don’t know. It is impossible to know if I would ever feel completely “ready” to go back. I do know that I am feeling good, better than I have in as long as I can remember. I also know I am ready to work, ready for routine, and ready for this next phase of my life.
From prep meetings I have had over the last two weeks, I know that somethings at work have changed: our files have evolved, people have moved on and others have joined the team, we are facing new opportunities and challenges. But it is not the newness and all the catching up that I have had to mentally prepare for. What I have had to prepare myself for the most is all the things that I know have not changed. All the things that contributed to my burnout in the first place, still there waiting for me. If I am being honest, somedays returning feels like the textbook definition of insanity.
But then I remember that there is one major difference: me. I have changed. I am a different person than I was in September. I finally feel like I know who I am for the first time in decades. I have set boundaries for myself, I know what my priorities are and I have had the chance to re-evaluate my plan for my one wild and precious life (thank you Mary Oliver).
So will I be able to handle the same old stressors differently? I won’t know for sure until I try. I am a lot more self-aware now, I have a better sense of what triggers my anxiety at work and I understand that to be successful I need pockets of rest (dare I say this could be the end of 8 hour days of back-to-back meetings). Most importantly, I know that if I am not deliberate, vigilant even, in managing myself then I will risk the progress I have made in my recovery. Everything that I have worked so hard to achieve in the last 185 days. Nothing is worth that.
