🫵 You, You
The responses to last week's post about burnout and an intentional road to recovery have been overwhelming. Between public and private messages, I clearly struck a chord—if I haven't responded to you yet, I'll get there!
As I processed the response in my time off (yes, I actually did take that time—more on that in an another post), I've been thinking about what the response signifies. One specific thing rises to the top:
It's important for me to be me, and for me to share my journey with others to help them to be them.
So to you, dear reader, the forthcoming challenge might be obvious:
Reflect and take action on the things that make you, you.
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Yes, the subject matter of that post had a particularly wide resonance, as we've all experienced and probably tried to push through burnout to an unhealthy degree.
But had I written a standard fair post with a SEO-favored paragraph about what burnout looks like and some carbon copy, bland advice on best practices for how to recover from it, complete with some lackluster stock picture of a guy at a desk looking stressed out (or an AI generated image of that 😳), I'm quite sure I wouldn't have all these people letting me know how deeply it impacted them.
I shared a snip of my private journal in last week's post: "I am burned." Man, did that hit with some folks.
And while most related with the feeling of being burned in a negative sense, one person I've worked with along the way completely flipped the script.
He wrote me to "share a little perspective on what can come from burning so bright for so long." Following his own nonlinear path out of the military and to higher education, he's now kicking some serious ass. He wrote, "All the energy you’ve poured in has given veterans like me the chance to burn even brighter."
He signed off: "Thank you for burning so bright."
Damn.
From writing privately at my wits end about my utter exhaustion, to taking the risk of sharing publicly my road to burnout recovery, to getting this type of validation that reinterprets the very word that I felt encompassed my husk-like state…
It's all a broader encouragement for me to keep going. This vulnerable sharing is part of what makes me who I am.
This blog has been tremendous in helping me process my own feelings and processes. I journal every day (currently on a 1,786 day streak in Day One, baby!), but there I'm writing for an audience of one. Here, my goal is to take the things that I'm working through and try and turn it into some type of actionable advice for others.
By writing here and sharing on social media, I create some tight feedback loops, where I get to interact and further process what I put out in the world.
I need to keep writing in a way that is authentically me. You better believe that I will do so.
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I've heard and seen some brilliant ways in which people are being their authentic selves lately, channeling inner oddities and curiosities into exceptional projects and nonlinear paths. Sometimes that's pursuing a passion and bringing an idea to fruition. Sometimes that's embracing the nontraditional paths at key times of transition.
My advice to anyone in that process: keep going. Keep being weird!
Keep charting a course that amplifies the things that make you, you.
And if you haven't started, if you feel like you're following someone else's playbook without much consideration for what your own soul desires and is capable of, perhaps consider giving it a shot.
And, a request: let me know how it's going, alright? The more I hear from folks, the more I learn, and hopefully the more I can help along the way. Because no one has to go at this life alone.
-Rye (me)
p.s. The consensus is that most people find matcha find it gross. Rarely, folks have responded to say they love it. I'm not sure I believe them.
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