“Shouting ‘self-care’ at people who actually need community care is how we fail them.”  

Nakita Valerio

Some days I still wake up and ask myself, how did I get here?

It’s been over 6 months since I left my full time job and yet if I close my eyes I can still feel that gripping sense of isolation, fear and exhaustion that I was living in for too long. It was a feeling of being stuck inside a toaster machine, being burnt on both sides and yet not sure if anyone could see me. There was a smell of burnt toast in the air but it was one that we were all breathing in and so it just felt normal.

Most days I told myself the answer was to actually work harder. I preferred to spend a few extra minutes responding to emails and to stay another hour in the office after everyone left to soak up the quiet, uninterrupted time. I reveled in the moment that I could pop online late at night or on a weekend and “get ahead” of the next day/week without the sinking feeling that “to dos” were simultaneously compounding in my inbox.

And believe it or not, this worked for a while. My excessive drive to perform was fueled by the immediate satisfaction I received when a colleague would respond late at night to thank me for my hard work or when I was able to climb the proverbial ladder of adding the word “Assistant,” “Associate,” and then…drum roll…. “Director” to my title. Perhaps I was on track to something great. But inside I felt completely beholden to a cycle that wasn’t actually getting me anywhere. I was on a track headed towards burnout and was unable to see clearly what was falling apart around me.

Six months later and I am still that same person inside. As I’ve written about in previous posts, I still hear on a daily basis that same inner voice lamenting that I’m not doing enough, not accomplishing enough and not worthy of praise or validation. I have, however, noticed a few stark differences in my mindset day to day.

One is that I’m less attached to labels than I once was. I remember going to a conference in between jobs about 10 years ago and feeling mortified that I had no larger company affiliation on my name tag. I think I had written “Higher Education Professional” under my name but not having a specific university or organization to back me up left me feeling extremely self-conscious. It felt wildly taboo and in many ways confusing to not have my identity tied to a job, profession or employer. I felt exposed and almost desperate to land a position so I could cling to an identifier.

Fast-forward 10+ years and now we finally have language for those individuals who are intentionally choosing to step back from their careers. LinkedIn’s new “career break” feature may be almost revolutionary to the average person who in earlier years was riddled with shame and guilt for stepping back from the rat race, whatever the reason may have been.

In an effort, however, to take baby steps back into the world of work, I recently began a new part time job in retail. I wanted to do something radically different from the office managerial positions I’ve held for the past 20 years, while also caring for my young daughter. It’s been an interesting life experiment and after fumbling through a spotty onboarding, I can say with confidence that I’m happy to be there. Happy to be in an environment that necessitates being almost 100% in the moment. Happy to interact with customers and help brighten up a moment in their day and then to leave most of my stress at the door at the end of the day. It’s a darn shame that folks in retail are grossly underpaid as they are working just as hard, if not harder than anyone I’ve seen in previous roles. And they are carrying a huge weight on their shoulders that for some starts at 4:00 in the morning with shipment processing and ends at 9 at night with store closing procedures.

One other thing I’ve noticed as I peer out from under my slightly tinted rose colored glasses is that the managers in retail are just as harried and stressed (if not more) than I was a few short months ago in the non-profit world. They are combatting upwards pressure, benchmarks, sales demands, conversion rates and toxic bureaucracy. They are tired, overworked, underpaid and understaffed, just like the rest of us.

Initially my reflections while writing this post led me to think that the challenge in finding the “right” job landed squarely with the individual employee’s mindset. What narratives and stories are we telling ourselves that frame our experience on the job? What is reasonable to expect of ourselves and how can we temper our inner critic?

This may all be true, however, in doing some further reading and reflecting (including with my sister, whose current role focuses on workplace culture and mental health) I’ve shifted my thinking a bit. Perhaps the mitigation of burnout and promotion of employee well-being may have more to do with an organization’s commitment to “community care” than individual responsibility. In other words, what are the company’s culture and workplace conditions and how do they manifest themselves in ways that support the well-being of all their employees, both on and off the clock? How are colleagues and managers alike looking out for one another and promoting values such as empathy, boundaries and rest?

This is clearly a very nuanced question and perhaps the topic of an entirely separate blog post. But as we hear a push in this country towards focusing more dollars and time on mental health, I think we need to look at organizational structures as a whole (schools, businesses, religious institutions, etc.) and ask how we are building those organizations so that everyone feels seen and cared for as individuals within a broader community.