From burnout to badass: My So-Called Career
I wrote this essay in summer 2019 on the anniversary of my return to London and my professional life after taking time out to begin the process of recovering from an extended period of burnout that threatened my career and my confidence.
In the months since writing this, My So-Called Career has gone from strength to strength, and I am now surrounded by an amazing and inspiring community of women on their own journey to take ownership of their so-called careers.
Jumping ship without a lifeboat
12 months ago, I was just beginning to reconnect with my professional self after a 6 monthish sabbatical. In January 2018, I quit my job as Global Strategy Director for Condé Nast and what was by most external measures a highly successful 17 year career in and around international media.
A few people saw this coming but to many it was a huge shock – some of my colleagues only realised I was leaving on my last day in the office. I didn’t tell most of my family until after I had left.
I had no back up plan, my only aim was to give myself some space and time to recover and repair after what had turned out to be an immensely stressful few years, with a collision of mental health issues, family dramas, international moves, new jobs, promotions, pay-rises and my reliable go-to state of competitive workaholism as a way of blocking out all the other stuff.
I had a few whispers of ideas about what a very different future might hold, but nothing real enough to grab hold of, and none of it fitted the linear career path I had been racing along so it was easy to file under M for midlife crisis and move swiftly on.
In reality, I was so burned out and overwhelmed by that point that I didn’t fully believe I would ever be ready or able to do anything much of anything again.
A few people I trust deeply cautioned me not to jump-ship without a lifeboat – but I was in no fit state to take on another job at that point, and one of the few things I knew with any certainty was that my next few years needed to look very different from the preceding ones to protect my health and my sanity. This wasn’t tinkering around the edges…. This felt more like I was ripping my life up and starting over. And yes, it was as terrifying as it sounds.
For a few weeks I veered between doing nothing and doing far too much – putting on a front to cover the fact that I felt more raw and vulnerable than I could remember. Feeling an odd mix of glacial calm and burning panic. What if I could never get back what I had given up? What if I didn’t want it in the first place? What the hell was I doing? Why the hell hadn’t I done this sooner?
Getting away from it all
In March, I flew to Thailand, where I lived and worked as an intern for one of Thailand’s leading wellness retreats – I got up at dawn to walk up a mountain for sunrise with groups of guests, served amazing vegan food, led meditations, taught exercise classes, showed guests how to make natural beauty and bodycare products, worked out, walked on the beach and spent time listening to guests and staff tell their stories and share their goals, challenges and fears. No one cared who I had been, or what I might be. I didn’t have to prove myself or get it right – I just had to be me (well, and not drop food on people, or lose guests).
In time I developed a much greater level of comfort with vulnerability – my own and that of others, and developed a reputation among the team as someone who staff and guests alike could open up to with ease. I became a master at making people cry (in a good way, honest!)
I had planned to stay for 3 months, but it turned out that my having lost sight of my competence and ability didn’t mean everybody else had too, and I was asked to stay on as acting manager while one of the permanent team was away, running the team I had joined as part of.
This was a brilliant and timely reminder that professional me was not done just yet after all.
Redefining what’s important
In my time in Thailand I met people from all walks of life, who lived very different lives from my own and who gave me an entirely different set of perspectives on my situation. They helped me work out what was most important to me, what I loved, what I was really good at – rather than what my job description said I was good at. They taught me that I was much, much more than the sum of the jobs I’d had and that I had a lot more to offer than strategy and business planning.
I realised I had allowed my relationship with work to become more and more toxic year by year – not the jobs or companies – I worked for amazing organisations, alongside phenomenal colleagues, partners and clients (hello if any of you are reading – you are ace!) – but the way I allowed work to control my life – to fill spaces I should have given to friends, relationships and family, the way I gradually replaced self esteem with professional validation, the way I convinced myself I held beliefs because I was terrified of the disconnect between my true beliefs and my day to day reality. I created a ‘professional me’ because I didn’t believe that the bog standard me was good enough.
I realised in Thailand, that I was done with being that me. That it was time for bog standard me to have a go at running the show. I had a strange feeling that it was all going to be ok – which was not something prior me would have been down with in the slightest.
That me was really not ok with uncertainty or ambiguity and would go to great lengths to avoid them.
Back to life, back to reality…
So in mid July I landed back in London – hot, parched London, where everyone was begging for rain. Having left the daily downpours and flash flooding of the peak of the Thai rainy season, I was immediately certain I was in the right place. And it turned out that while I had been away and keeping my mind and body busy with other stuff, those glimmers of what the future might hold that had previously been tantalisingly out of reach had, without my realising, taken on a life of their own.
It wasn’t an epiphany or anything… but one day someone asked me if I knew what I was going to do next, and somehow I did. I drew the very first vision for my business on the back of an envelope in my front room and then tucked it away in a drawer and backed away slowly for a while.
It would have been really easy to submit to the almost daily panic I felt in summer 2018 – despite by then having a plan and a budget that allowed me to support myself to the end of the year, I began having financial panic dreams in which I accrued life altering debt without knowing it; dreams from which I woke up confused and insecure. Doubting the truth about my qualifications, my employment, my home, my stability, my past and my present.
But with every day and week that passed, I felt my confidence grow and felt increasingly able to take real steps toward making that scribble on the back of the envelope a reality.
Baby steps only mind – a couple of early stage giant leaps backfired on me and left me wondering if I had been right after all when I felt that I might never be ready to flex my professional muscles again.
New beginnings
Little by little I learned to be kind to myself, gave myself permission to backtrack, to make mistakes, to be messy and most importantly to do this my way. At my pace and by my rules.
It was my business after all.
And that has been my approach ever since.
12 months ago I had no income, no clients and little to no confidence.
I would introduce myself as some weird hybrid of old me and new me – always using my former career and job titles to provide validation and cracking jokes about having made myself unemployable to hide my worry that I might have done exactly that, as if all my previous experience, the credibility I had built over years of hard work, achievements and relationship had been wiped out the minute I stepped back off the treadmill and accepted that burnout isn’t just something you read about, that happens to other people; it’s real and it’s vicious and insidious and it had happened to me.
Now I have all the signs of a viable and sustainable business. It looks nothing like what I did before, but it feels like a natural progression now I’m here.
I have been at capacity for much of the last year, and while I earn a fraction of my former salary right now, I am well ahead of the target I set myself for the year, and most importantly, I feel happy, content and proud of the work I do.
My relationship with money has changed beyond measure. I feel like I truly earn what I make. I cried when I took my first payment from a client – I don’t think I’ve ever been moved to tears by a paycheck, no matter how overdrawn I may have been at the time.
Kicking ass and taking names
I have amazing coaching clients, both private and corporate, who pay me the ultimate compliment by referring me to their companies, colleagues, friends and families. Women who inspire me and motivate me every day with the steps they take to take ownership of their careers and the progress they make when they set their hearts and minds going in the same direction. They describe their work with me as taking them from ‘confused to confident’, ‘exhausted to empowered’, and ‘overwhelmed to energised’.
I have created a 12 week career development course which has been described as ‘exceptional’, ‘invaluable’, ‘empowering’ and ‘enlightening’ by participants.
I deliver workshops which break down the issues holding women back and which create a positive, fun and supportive environment for learning and trying new things.
I surround myself with people I learn from and am supported by.
I introduce myself now as someone who makes work better for early and mid career women and promotes healthy relationships with work.
“I no longer feel the need to add what I used to do to give me validation – to convince people I am worthy of their time or their money. ”
I no longer feel the need to add what I used to do to give me validation – to convince people I am worthy of their time or their money. It’s a massive part of my life and my story, and it’s given me the experience and perspective to do what I do now and do it well, but it no longer defines me.
I am much more understanding of old me, and how she got where she did. She went through some really tough stuff along the way and it was much easier to always be on to the next thing, desperate to prove that hard work can solve anything, than it was to face up to the fact that life is just a massive bitch sometimes for no apparent reason.
I am also incredibly proud of her. For taking the massive leap into the unknown that allowed all this to happen, and for not giving up when it all felt too hard.
But I’m glad that present me is in the driving seat these days. She’s way nicer. And her story is a hell of a lot more interesting.
So today I have been celebrating myself, and everything I’ve achieved in the last 12 months.
And while I am very happy to take the credit for most of that, I couldn’t have done it without all the friends and colleagues past and present who have been there for me.
Guys – you are fab. And without you I would still be a manic workaholic teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
About the author
Penelope Jones is the founder of My So-Called Career. She is a career coach and consultant who specialises in helping women in their 30s beat burnout and develop healthy, sustainable relationships with work.
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