There's something exhilarating about working up against a deadline with mounting pressure. There's so much riding on your abilities to deliver that every action you take is high stakes. The adrenaline kicks in to sharpen your focus and clear your mind. The air in the room is filled with angst, tension and nervous energy that further drives home the urgency of the situation. You imagine yourself succeeding and earning the respect of your peers. Thoughts of failure and doubt also flash in your mind intermittently. Some people live for the rush of these moments and constantly seek the high that comes with it. Take for instance athletes that get fired up for crunch time of a big game or the race car driver that's on his last three laps.

In the first few years of my career, I worked as a graphic designer juggling multiple projects under tight deadlines. My daily schedule was 9:00 am to whenever. Working weekends was very much a thing. This is what I understood my career to be and was inline with how I had witnessed my father tirelessly run his own business for 30+ years. Just when you think you can't push any further, you find a way. Because there's zero chance that you miss a deadline or let down a client. It's not in your DNA to accept anything other than success. Combine this with an internal drive for my craft and a heavy dose of competitiveness. These are the makings of someone that's "all the way in", deeply invested, passionate and willing to do whatever it takes to win. There were always going to be people in the room that were smarter or more talented than me, but no one was ever going to out-work me. This was my ethos. I lived to work.

So much of my identity in my early 20's was tied to my career. It didn't make me fun to be around and I often sacrificed aspects of my personal life that I believed were in the way of my career aspirations. To further drive that into my core, the first 5 years of my career working at ad agencies taught me that my life came second to work. I missed out on a lot over the course of those years, but it all seemed worth the sacrifice if I could thrive in my career.

I learned how to dig deep to find the grit, resilience and fortitude that gave me a reputation as being dependable, dedicated and hardworking. I would be resourced on projects where I had zero background, but I'd find a way every single time to come out on top. I would do it under the pressures of heavy time constraints, while juggling multiple projects that also had abysmal timelines. Once I hit my stride by gaining more exposure and experience, I did what any designer worth their salt did in the early 2000's, I joined a large ad agency that had big aspirations to win over global brands.

With this new role came much higher stakes and multi-million dollar projects with ruthless deadlines. There's no ramp up and no training wheels, you get thrown into it from the first week. It's sink or swim and there are no shortcuts. You either knew your shit or you didn't. I lost count of the amount of nights, where I would be slouched over my laptop past 7pm with the cleaning crew vacuumed around me. I became a permanent fixture in the office and developed the nickname as the "last man in the building", which I actually took pride in, because it spoke to how driven and hardworking I was. I grew fond of my new nickname and wore it like a badge of honor.

At first, I developed this schedule because I wanted to put in the extra reps to acquire new skills and gain confidence working on this large stage with global brands. Over time, the work began to pile up, meetings were endless and the deadlines began to collide. On the rare occasion that I'd leave work at 6:00, the inside joke to yell out was, "half day?!". That joke never got old and always made me belly laugh. Until I didn't feel like laughing anymore. I didn't feel like anything after 6 months of working like this.

The added time and effort that I was putting into my career was paying dividends as I began to create a name for myself within the agency, but outside of work I had trouble sleeping, difficulty relaxing and was always on edge. When I was at work the joy that I once had was sapped out of me. Work became a grind and I was constantly running on adrenaline. Mind you I did not drink coffee or caffeinated drinks, it was was my body constantly in this fight or flight mode. If you've learned anything about me in this blog it's that I love pushing myself to my limits and fighting through some type of challenge. Additionally, I had never developed any sort of self-care or wellness skills as a part of this lifestyle, so this was a crash course in defining my limits and my values.

I didn't realize it at the time but I was in a perpetual state of burnout week after week without ever really being able to recover. As the months went by fight or flight mode became more fight or find a new career. See this persistent burnout caused me to develop anxiety that I had never known before. I was able to internalize it all and grind through project after project. My ideas and designs were improving and so were my abilities. This was the trade off for me, there was no middle ground, I had to be all in. Looking back, I wish I was able to feel a sense of accomplishment or satisfaction when one of my campaigns would launch or when my work would be selected by the executives for a project amongst the sea of concepts. The dirty truth about the advertising industry that I would find out is that you're only as good as your last project. So you can't ride out the high of a successful project, you're simply on to the next one.

The final straw for me though was not the damage that I was doing to my overall wellbeing. It wasn't the 4 hours of sleep or the mounting anxiety or working 6-7 days a week with some weeks totaling over 60 hours. It was when three whole days went by and wasn't able to spend a single minute with my 2-month old baby boy. On the third night, I beeline for his crib as soon as I walk in a little passed 10:00pm because I was hoping to catch him awake, so I could hold him. It was in that very moment that I realized that my passion for fatherhood greatly overshadowed anything I could do in my career. There wasn't any amount of career success, job title or amount of money that would outweigh me being the best father that I could be. This was my legacy and the identity that would give me great joy and fulfillment.

The sad truth about my bouts with burnout is that it took me years to shake off the anxiety and damage I had done to my overall health. I had to acclimate and learn how to live a balanced life, where I could have a thriving career, while being a devoted husband and father. Often times I'd catch myself internally struggling with the normalcy of a 9 to 5 workload, because of the lack of pressure. In a way, it was almost boring to work this way. When you learn something unhealthy that is intoxicating, it can become habit-forming and a part of your identity. Rewriting my story was difficult, but with persistence and discipline I was able to shut off work right at 5:00 when I stepped out of the office, so I could focus on what really matters. Burnout taught me a lot about myself and it forced me to realign my priorities, values and most importantly my identity. Ultimately, I chose to ”work to live” not “live to work”.