Why do I keep overdoing it?
I gotta stop living near the edge
So far November has been really tough. Work has been intense, Jen’s been away heaps, I was sick, and Grandpa died which nearly tipped me off the cliff.
Perhaps I’m reading into things too much because I’m tired, and the combination of those 4 things would burn anyone out.
But I can’t help but feel that I’ve been pushing myself too hard and put myself near the edge, so that when 4 things happened that were outside of my control, I almost tumbled off.
Fortunately I didn’t, as my experience from being depressed earlier this year helped me identify that it was time to ease up, plus I had some incredible family help.
But why? Why do I keep pushing myself so hard, which only makes me vulnerable whenever a bump in the road comes along?
Ultimately I think there’s 4 reasons:
I’m trying to fix mistakes of the past, most notably selling our family home before the pandemic to fund Alfred.
I’m trying to have a second career that I enjoy as much as playing Rugby, and my fear that I wouldn’t enjoy office life, at times, seems to be playing out.
I still have undealt with trauma from losing to the British and Irish Lions, which sometimes makes me feel like my rugby career was a complete failure, which then causes me to try too hard in retirement and overcompensate.
I fear dying having not led a fun and meaningful life. A fear that’s only intensified following the recent deaths of both my grandfathers.
I know there’s no quick fix for solving these, and the first step is to calm down, recharge, and then start working on strategies to deal with them, so I can progress towards my goals, without living so close to the edge.
Once I’ve recharged, to deal each thing I think I need to:
Forgive myself for mistakes of the past and accept that while I had the best of intentions, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, and at least I’ve learned a ton about myself along the way, and wiser for the experience.
Accept that building any career is going to take a really long time, way longer than I would like, and beating myself up trying to rush the process is only going to make things take longer.
Accept that losing the Lions series decider wasn’t all my fault, even though I copped a lot of the blame for losing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Also accept that most of the people who were super critical have low self-esteem, and took their anger out on me because they hate themselves.
Dying is something I can’t change and worrying about it is just a waste of energy. Energy I need to channel into things I can control.
As you can see, there’s a lot of work to get through. But thanks to inspiration from some good friends, I’ve decided I can’t do this work alone and started seeing my psychologist again.
Only this time as a preventative measure, because I don’t want to wait until I’ve fallen back into a heap before I face up to the root causes of why I keep pushing myself into burnout.
Being chronically tired and depressed sucks. Thanks for reading.
It sounds like you're pretty well across it all and at the risk of double stating, I always remind myself that stress is part of life and we need it to grow. The trick is stopping the stress before it becomes overwhelming and making sure that the things that cause us stress are associated with a positive outcome, or something worth it.
Eg. stress about Alfred hitting a KPI would be a positive stressor because you love it. Stress about something you're not really invested in but have responsibility for would be a negative stressor.
Sorry to hear about your Grandpa. Thank you for sharing and for your honesty. You are not alone but you are braver than many of us for sharing your thoughts. Please keep on sharing.