Last Sunday of September 19, I ran away from home. I changed messenger accounts, grabbed a handful of money, a bag of essentials and went away. No, I didn't get into a heated dramatic argument with a family member I was living with. No, I didn't run away because I got into a fight with my SO. Though, when I did tell him I was running away, he just told me to bring an umbrella because it was rainy out.
I was running away because I needed to step back and reevaluate. My boundaries were crossed for the last time at work. That was the main reason why I changed accounts so that I wouldn't have to deal with the plethora of unread messages from my boss, the different GCs with my workmates, and yes, from my students as well. It got to a point where opening my messenger account was too overwhelming, so I said no.. in all directions even towards my closest friends and passion project partners.
It was the Sunday after the first week of the school calendar, and looking back, I still wondered how I survived that week. Instead of stopping to rest because of the cold and recurring fever I was experiencing, I still showed up because I thought showing up meant getting majority of my workload done, but instead, more things kept piling up, and despite my very best efforts to graduate and bypass some of the responsibilities I didn't want in the first place but was handed to me anyway. No significant turn-over happened and I still was the one in-charge of my post. Co-workers, who were in the same predicament as I was, went into several rows with the other co-workers who weren't assigned such responsibility. Faculty drama was eminent. Egos were hurt here and there. Accusations flung like dung, and basically everybody went home spent the first week.
In my case, I had to deal with a lot of angry parents, my boss asking for updates every fifteen minutes (because she was quarantined and felt she had no other choice but micromanage remotely), angry co-workers who didn't get into the best mood because I wasn't in the best mood, upset students contacting me here and there asking about their names ending up in the different track list, and at the same time, playing construction worker, carrying and scavenging for piles of modules and distribution boxes to provide the students just less than a week after our loads were revealed, where I found out I was assigned an advisory. Hooray. No one was happy at all.
By the end of Friday, I was spent.. after playing tour guide to various confused parents who had no idea which room their childrens' advisory belonged to, after playing confidant to angry parents whose kids ended up in a different track or didn't show up in the enrollment list, all on top of entertaining the parents of my advisory class.
The faculty room was a mess. Everything was too loud. People in the work GCs were having heated discussions again and another meeting was called at the most inappropriate time. There were too many messages in my Messenger account that even my personal messages became a nuisance. I was exhausted and eventually broke down that afternoon. I wasn't even at home, I was just in my cubicle at work and just hid my face on my work bag to pretend I was taking a nap.
Part of that breakdown was the disappointment that I couldn't even insert a sliver of time to participate in an online national convention for chemical engineers that I expensively paid for 🥲😒. All I really had to do was open my phone, go to a link and listen but my hands were really just too loaded at work.
Even though I was already short on money, I felt like I needed to reward myself a nice burger after feeling like I was juggling 3 different full time jobs simultaneously that week while sick.
Exhaustion took its toll basically and I made up my mind to be on airplane mode for anything work-related over the weekend. I activated my second account, the one which has not been defiled by work GCs so much and used it over the weekend while setting my other phone to airplane mode.
It was peaceful. So peaceful. For a burnt-out person, that two-day long peace allowed me a small moment to completely breathe.
I said no to a meeting. I also refused a couple of co-workers asking for updates.
It felt good. There was guilt but I felt good. It was just me sitting in front of a beach eating icecream on the seashore.
My Struggle With Boundaries
I admit that boundaries are not my strongest suit. Maybe some people thought of it as a good idea to maximize my people-pleasing tendencies.
Way to go. They got what they wanted, but earned another burnt-out employee who's left no choice but to stop caring, dodge responsibilities and or plot her early dismissal.
This is bad. Because I know if this keeps up, no matter where I am, most people will get the idea that it's okay for anyone to cross my boundaries, and I don't like the idea of dealing with the stress that comes with hating myself for that. I'm already dealing with the stress of trying to make my time serving in the educational institution, ✨worth it✨, and that alone is already a load of work. It's hard to love a job where you constantly feel burnt-out because of a workload that is disproportional to your pay.
These days, I often keep coming back to a book called Ichigo Ichie or The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way. As a loose explanation on what the book is about, it's a book about being in the present, or staying in the moment:
"Each meeting, everything we experience, is a unique treasure that will never be repeated in the same way again. So if we let it slip away without enjoying it, the moment will be lost forever."
It's a good book. Though as much as I want to say that I've mastered it, I'm far from it and can humbly say that I am still a novice in that art.
Because of life's temporary nature and the forever involvement of change in our lives, the book emphasizes appreciating what life has to offer us while it lasts. It also mentions several "enemies of the present" and ironically the first one mentioned was "prioritizing the urgent (for other people) over the important (for us)".
Imagine how I massively failed in this department with the way I dealt with things 😂.
I wasn't taught how to set up proper boundaries at school nor at home growing up. Eventually these not drawing the line or not setting up proper boundaries actually presented a ton of problems right now. I could have saved a lot of self-inflicted heartbreak if I said no in the first place.
Second to that is assuming that we actually have unlimited time in this life, thus "we put off or postpone things that we really want to do, the things that are actually good for us or the things that make our souls light up the most."
My dad is the type of person who goes by the book. He believes in hard work so much that probably everyone who didn't succeed at life was because they probably didn't work hard enough. He wants me to actually keep reviewing my engineering notes, or learn how to code, or learn VBA so that I won't lose the knowledge I already accumulated and hopefully gain new ones. He's the type to always tell me to always be prepared when opportunities arrive. It's really annoying to be honest, but he's not wrong.
However, I can't help but feel invalidated because I always express how much I barely have time to take care of myself nowadays due to work and my responsibilities at home. Work alone is already physically and mentally draining. Throw in chores, throw in faculty drama, throw in home life drama, I often find it miraculous on how I am still able to find enough energy to keep up with my work outs.
Well, in my defence, my workouts isn't really something I can skimp since it's a need these days. It helps me deal with a lot of internal rage and emotional turmoil.
But it's also true that if I don't make time for my dreams, or keep postponing preparations for it, I am going to stagnate, and won't be at least 50% prepared for whatever opportunities are heading my way.
Yes, it adds to the overwhelm.
Yes, these days, I could barely keep my head above the surface, but I know I don't need to do everything all at once, and even if I do, I don't need to be good at everything either, and I guess I have to accept the fact that I won't slay on other things.
"Kaika: setting aside other people's demands to make room for our passion, allowing the reason we feel we were put on earth to begin to blossom"
Almost everyone has heard about Ikigai but not everyone has heard about Kaika. To recap, Ikigai is discovering something we become passionate about and which comes easily to us and is famous for this 4-circle Venn diagram:
Basically Ikigai and Kaika are part of the Mankai formula:
IKIGAI + KAIKA + TIME = MANKAI 🌸
These two, with the addition of TIME (if we're patient for it), allows us to achieve Mankai.
"If we discover our talent, open ourselves up to it, and make it a priority in our lives, our passion will be able to develop, leading to our happiness and that of others."
The more I reflect on it, the more I found out that I reached another personal difficulty: First, it was my pride (because of my tendency to not be seen as anything than someone who is "ready to help") but now, it's also about my patience.
I can see clearly now that I have always been and still am an impatient person.
How else am I always not content about my workload or the nature of my workload and about a ton of menial things when I could have channeled my energy elsewhere?
That's what makes the root of my impatience I guess. It is the fear of wasting resources, like why spend time practicing on something if it doesn't end up amounting to anything substantial?
So there is always that fear, and I guess it's fair to say I'm still struggling with it at the moment.
I packed a huge bag that day even though I just commuted to the beach. For some reason, I even packed my ChE reviewer and a calculator. I didn't really get that much done but at least I got to review a few pages of Thermodynamics 1.
The sun was setting and the music deafened but I was content with my time away from home.
How about you, did you ever have these kinds of realizations during and after a burn-out?
Readings:
The Book of Ichigo Ichie The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way by Héctor GarcÃa and Francesc Miralles
Roxanne Marie is the twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She is a chemical engineer by profession, pole-dancer and blogger by passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Currently, she works as a science and research instructor in her hometown, Tagbilaran City, all the while documenting her misadventures, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial here on Hive.
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