Why Leave + Week 1: Is my life a series of chores?

The decision to take a Leave of Absence initially started out feeling like a wild fantasy, a dream. I'd been feeling discontent with my job for several months now, after realizing that I'd been bamboozled into taking on a job that promised 'impact', but really impacted corporate fat cats' wallets more than anything else. To top it off, the intensity with which managers demanded work be done started to feel ridiculous to the point of absurdity. Why was I here? Was this really what all those late nights and tears in undergrad culminated in: some desk job that made me feel like the protagonist in Aviici's "I Could Be the One" music video? (if you haven't watched it, you definitely should - it's some real deep-cutting commentary on American work life and living to work rather than the other way around).

Unfortunately for me, my quarter-life ruminations coincided with an absolute monster of a project, where I was working 100+ hours every week with an extremely demeaning and demanding manager who was shockingly incompetent at her own job and routinely dodged blame for anything that went wrong on the project by lying about others' performance. It honestly felt like I was trapped in some kind of sitcom hell, where the protagonist thinks "Surely my overbearing boss can't get any worse," which then seals the protagonist's fate. Groan.

The way I was treated on that project, on top of suffering physical breakdowns of my body, really highlighted my need to step away from work life. The fact that so much had been allowed to happen on that project and nothing had been done about it really highlighted my corporate overlords' priorities, which was obviously the bottom line at the end of the day, no matter how much Analyst mental health was crushed along the way. That, combined with hearing the quote that "you can always be replaced at your job, but you can never be replaced at home" really pushed me toward taking a step back. Because really, what was the point of pouring my health (and I already had chest pain from the stress of earlier projects at this job) into this job when I would likely quit anyways? What was the point of accumulating so many health conditions just due to work at such a young age (24) for a company that would fill my position the same day I dropped dead? I needed time to recover and focus on my mental health.

Taking time off was one of the best decisions I'd made in the past for myself. College was an absolute slog, having attended one of the 'Ivy plus' schools in America (cue eyeroll), and taking three months off to truly focus on myself and all the demons I'd been running from up until then set me up for a more balanced, healthy experience when I came back. I had time to investigate why I viewed school and clout and jobs the way that I did, and I feel that that made a significant difference in how I approached my life - being kinder toward myself, for example, and really understanding why rest was important.

Again, I've found myself at the end of my rope, where I'm desperately in need of legitimate rest. I'm trying not to link the two LOAs together, because they are caused by different circumstances, but it's admittedly difficult. In this case, I hit a point where I financially can afford to take time off from work, which is an enormous privilege that I am grateful to have, and I hit a point where I just said to myself "this is not worth it anymore". To be honest, I could have kept slogging on through my job, but the timing and what I envisioned for the timeline lined up too well to not seize this chance. And I was finally financially secure enough to ensure that I could survive while on leave this time, instead of scrambling for money on leave last time.

But honestly, I also did just hit a burnout point. I wanted nothing to do with my company's projects anymore and nothing sounded exciting enough to supersede my need to rest and take time off. I simply did not have any desire to work anymore, and would not be guilt-tripped into grinding myself into a dust for a company that clearly didn't give a shit about me.

Coming from someone who's grinded and honestly been a bit of a workaholic, it was both a relief and a shock to realize nothing interested me anymore. My brain was just so tired that it said "no more".

When I envisioned myself starting my leave of absence, I envisioned myself feeling joyful and free. No more 8am meetings, guerilla phone calls from my manager, or kowtowing to ridiculous commands and arbitrary deadlines. And yet there were still tasks left to complete before I could really be off the hook. Medical bills to pay off after contacting my insurance, corporate expenses to file after 3 months of being just too busy to do them, and many more. The list of chores that had passed me by in life that I was straining to complete before officially starting leave was so great that even dedicating several full-time days to completing them did not completely eliminate them. 

Dizzy and tired, I saw myself working to my physical limit once again - this time, for myself rather than my job. I realized this list might grow forever and maybe my best bet was to tackle it slowly rather than working myself into the ground to try to finish it all at once. I'm still formulating thoughts on that one, but that's where I've landed. As frustrating as it is to not be as efficient as I'd like to be at completing those tasks, and instead of thinking about what is physically possible for me to achieve, maybe I should think more in terms of what is reasonable for me to do in a day. 

And so ends my first week on leave - mainly catching up on tasks that urgently needed to be done in an effort to 'finally start' my actual leave, which I envisioned as the fun, restful part of leave. 

However, speaking with my therapist made me realize a few things: my self-stated purpose for this leave has been to create a better life for myself. Not just escaping my life by taking a step away, but figuring out how to fit more joy into my everyday life and figuring out how to live a good life for myself. And that's a process that takes time and lots of energy that can't all be expended in one day. Even this, the act of completing what feel like chores, in the everyday, are things that work toward bettering my life. 

Somehow, I think that way about tidying up my apartment and trying to figure out a system of regular tidying that works for me. However, getting these other tasks done (replacing my laptop battery) feel less like they contribute to my well-being somehow, even though I'll be using this laptop everyday now, probably, instead of my work laptop. Somehow those one-off tasks that I need to do feel more like I've fallen behind on my life and taking care of business than they do routine steps that would make my life better. For example, a very belated thank-you email to someone who helped me get a job interview that I didn't pass. Or picking up stuff from a friend of a friend's apartment.

At the same time, I'm trying to figure out and plan travel. I haven't seen some of my closest friends since before 2020 and feel like now that I finally have some free time, maybe I should visit them. In all fairness, I was totally occupied with school back then, but I've since let work take over my life as my primary dictator. It's not a good feeling. And yet, somehow visiting them also feels like a chore that needs to be checked off a list. I feel like my time is being demanded of me in a lot of different areas, and these commitments don't feel planned on my end at all, which isn't a great feeling. It feels like I'm answering to a lot of other people again, and bending around their plans, which is frustrating. But maybe that's just what adult life is when your friends live in different cities and everyone has a job, a life, and a future to nourish.

I'm trying to be better about saying no to commitments that take time from me in ways that don't serve me well. A part of me wonders whether I should use this time to also reapply to business school, but another part of me feels that maybe I'm just leaning toward things that feel familiar that I know I can physically do because I've done them before. An opportunity came up to help out with a nonprofit that I was trying to earn a spot in earlier this year, but I'm not sure if this is worth it yet or if it's something that I care about enough to give up my limited time off. It feels hard to say no and balance commitments when I know I could physically do certain things, but maybe shouldn't for the sake of my own health, which I've rarely prioritized before taking leave. 

A part of me also wonders how others will view my leave. I'm sure people might expect some stories of extravagant travels or other things, and it's hard to drown those anticipated expectations out of my head. But I do want, at the end of the day, to have a better life when I come back to work. And I want to figure out what that better life looks like on the daily, when I am still working. 

My current theory is that I should just say no to more things, especially at work. I feel a bit taken advantage of there, like I was pushed way too hard for others' personal gain with no regard for myself, and I let it happen because of some myth of better promotion odds, a better professional reputation, or something else illusory and hypothetical.

I don't want my life on leave to feel like a series of obligations, which is how I felt at work, and I think what's been on my mind the most this week. I feel like before I 'play' and take time to travel and do things that actually excite me (like maybe traveling abroad), I feel like I 'have to' finish these chores that I've been putting off and that have likely been hanging out in the back of my mind for some time now. I want to know what that freedom feels like, to not have any duties or obligations or anyone to answer to anymore. I don't think I quite ever got that. Ever. I always had to make money or jump through hoops I didn't necessarily want to just to survive. I want to change the way I approach things to something healthier, more sustainable, and something that's actually conducive to happiness for myself instead of for others.

For the first time in my life, maybe I can finally be free, whatever that looks like.