In the summer of 2018, on a Friday night, I got home from work and broke down in my guest room. I think I was cleaning out the cat litter. I had just had a tough, emotional day where we’d suddenly let one of our leaders go — one of my peers. Although I agreed with the decision, it didn’t make it any easier. It probably wasn’t the first time I felt this, but at that moment I was fully aware of how lonely my position as HR could be. Groups of employees were processing at happy hours. Talking with each. Getting sad or angry or feeling relief. And as all my local friends were coworkers, I had no one to turn to.
Work had saved my life through my bad marriage and painful divorce. I tied my identity to it because I felt that who I was would completely disappear otherwise. I will never lose that gratitude and I have never regretted doing what I needed to do to get through that chapter. But I realized on that Friday that work had become my entire identity. When something went wrong there, it felt like my whole life went wrong. I didn’t have anywhere else to anchor myself.
Shortly after that experience, I started gradually changing things. I joined an indoor volleyball league. I started doing fitness classes and hiking regularly, and eventually built up to running again. I started writing — fiction and then this blog. I still cared deeply about my work (I still do), but I made the weekend and late-night work a rarity instead of a rule.
And over time I got happier. As I got happier I could handle more at work. I’d still feel beat up some days, but not beat down. I could handle tough situations better. I could feel the hard emotions and process them more quickly to move forward. I no longer felt that the only place I was valuable was within my work. I started feeling value in just being a person again. My work was better off for it too, I believe, and I got promoted that next year after arguably putting in fewer hours. Rather, I put in more intentional and focused hours.
I am not a paragon of work-life balance — I like to live life a little more integrated than some people are comfortable with — but I was reflecting today how necessary it has been for me to build a life outside of work. Don’t get me wrong, my job means the world to me. But it is not the world.
We are too complex and beautiful to be boxed into one identity, one sliver of our experience. So I will keep building my career because it is part of who I am and I find purpose and meaning in doing so, but more importantly, I will keep building a life.
With Love,
Natalie