It is now two years ago that during a day trip E and I had a conversation about my wellbeing in which I broke down in tears and we came to the conclusion there and then that I was burnt out. A good moment to take stock of where I am at.

What came before
In the spring of 2024 I sought out the help of a psychologist, which was very useful to see what I can do myself to rebalance. In parallel it became clear what the root cause was, and that it was external. My friend and business partner Frank fell ill, and in hindsight I had been carrying a lot of weight to fill his gap for a long time already, since mid 2022. His condition required most of my and my team’s attention and only after his passing last September did I get around to working on my own recovery.

Nominally I stopped working last September, or at least that was what I and my company communicated. That meant I needed to hand over internal tasks, which took a long time. When we started the company in 2011, and there was just the four founders, I took on some agreed internal tasks. Finance and taxes, IT, suppliers. Gradually that workload grew as our team grew. What you end up with is de facto processes for all those tasks, that only exist in my head and where all the parameters that feed into a decision also only existed in my head. And mostly as tacit knowledge. It needed time to make that work explicit so it could be delegated. And for some things we needed to bump into constraints after that delegation to figure out what exactly it was I did for some tasks. Only around Christmas I had the feeling that delegation of tasks was mostly done. Meaning that only early this year I thought I could properly let myself rest. I also felt I started slowly improving.

Where I am now
That’s not completely true though in practice. Responsibilities keep on having weight even after they’re delegated, and I find I don’t have the energy or bandwidth to show up for them. Also because if I’m needed to show up, it is for anomalies, and that’s the type of thing I have no resilience for yet at all. My voluntary board roles I can’t properly fulfil either, but there’s also no real way to delegate parts of it. So I have announced to some of them I will step down this year.
Yes, I’m slowly getting better in the sense that my mood at home is mostly ok, the grumpiness mostly gone. But as soon as I’m exposed to outside expectations or things get out of the ordinary (like having the kitchen renovated) that quickly is too much for me. As a result I felt like curling up under the covers for most of last month for instance.
I did keep working on client projects all that time since last September. My main client engagement has been a place of relative quiet in the past few years, where I could focus on the content, and where the colleagues let me my space and time. Having clients like that has been amazing and important for our company last year. Lately however I found myself struggling to be fully involved. I felt increasingly disconnected and somewhat lost. That may not be problematic to the client (yet) at this time, but it does feel awful to myself. Similarly I feel I’m losing connection to my company and team, but at the same time I don’t have the energy for it, and when I do connect I immediately feel what an emotional drain it is.

All in all there’s no novel stress, but there is a lack of joy, and the regular work means I don’t create proper time to rest and relax either, and any type of anomaly throws me off the rails immediately. I still get disproportionally mad at myself about simple things like forgetting to bring something from the supermarket twice in a row, or like when recently I went for ice cream with Y and had forgotten to bring my wallet.

Where next
It’s been a long walk, these past two years. And the walk will still be a good stretch longer I know. We made a trip to Portugal, visiting family and friends, and exploring Lisbon the past two weeks. That took me away from things, most of the time. Now that we returned our new kitchen will finally be ready, allowing hopefully a more normal rhythm at home again too.

I’ll keep seeking to reduce my tasks and responsibilities. I still haven’t learned to stop at times, step away from the laptop, go for a walk. The long walk of the past years has seen way too few walks I know. The shape of my days hasn’t changed one bit the past two years I must admit. Although the stress has been removed, and some of its content has been switched out to allow for more exploration, overall it feels like Groundhog day usually. Going through work like motions that aren’t effective in any way when I should really stop. Most of all I need to learn what it is to sit still and far niente, dolce or not. I’ve realised I really don’t know how to do nothing for more than a minute.

Returning from Portugal I noticed the soles of my walking shoes have worn through. So I need to replace them. The long walk is far from over.