Rejection and Burnout

I don't remember if it was ever actually expressed to me or not, but I grew up thinking that if you just diligently worked on something, you would 'be successful'. Whether that was diligently practicing a Beethoven piece on the piano in order to successfully play it at a recital; diligently learning what I needed to learn in school in order to successfully get good grades; diligently practicing basketball so I got good enough to be the captain of my junior high team; diligently working out how to move and do jumps in order to successfully become a high school cheerleader when a friend asked me to join her in try-outs. I just did it. Diligently. Musicality, cleverness, sportiness and... well... peppiness didn't really seem to come into it. I just doggedly did what I needed to do and was always rewarded for it.

And then I grew up.

After a childhood of doing whatever I put my mind to, life in the grown-ups' world turned out to be considerably trickier. I learned that there is no simple formula - do A then do B and you will get C. Nope. The real world is a lot messier, a lot less predicable, a lot less... fair.

When I decided to try my hand at tv, everything initially fell into my lap. I was hired after my first audition for a tv presenting job where they saw 1000 applicants. I was in my early 20s, I was fit, my hair was great, I was good at my job because I just worked and worked at it. And everything seemed to float along happily for a few years. Then I had a baby. I took some time out and when I went back to work after looking after the baby, things had changed.

The routine of 'work diligently to succeed' didn't seem to just happen anymore. I was working harder than ever - looking for work, meeting people, applying for jobs, auditioning for jobs and sometimes getting those jobs - and was actually WORKING HARDER than ever - nappies, playing, making food, bedtime, waking up in the middle of the night, caring, soothing, cleaning, day after day after day. And it wasn't just the baby chores that I was doing. The previously shared work that my partner and I did - cleaning, shopping, cooking, laundry - had suddenly become 100% my responsibility. I don't remember how that happened, but it did. For some reason (*sideeye*). I was doing it all. I did not feel ‘successful’.

No one was happy for me when I did a load of laundry. No one said thanks. No one said congratulations. No one sent flowers. No one put money in my bank account. A load of clean laundry was not 'success' for me. It did not feel like an achievement. It was something that I had to do whether I wanted to or not. Dirty socks are not going to wash themselves. I was exhausted. I hadn't slept properly in years.

... but...

I just worked diligently. I doggedly did what I had to do, but 'for some reason' it wasn't enough. My work outside of the house was going well, but seemingly nothing I did at home was up to par... and I soon started to understand that actually pretty much nothing about me was satisfactory. I was dumb and uncouth and annoying and too needy. My work was silly and inferior and entirely without merit ("The internet is just the new ham radio. I don't know why you're wasting your time."). I was no longer the 'fun' 'cool' 'hot' 'young' woman I'd been. I was just a dopey, tired mum with floppy skin on her belly. Just the grossest. That's what I was told, in so many words. And that's exactly how I felt.

... but ...

I just worked diligently. Because that's how you succeed, right? I kept trying and trying and nothing seemed to be right. I couldn't understand why when I would go to work presenting a live daily technology tv show, I'd feel great and on top of things and confident and clever and attractive, then I'd get home and felt like a stupid, ugly, fat, useless, unsuccessful loser. I was never able to understand what I was doing wrong. One week I was humiliated for doing something. The next week I was humiliated for not doing it. "But you said..." "No I didn't!!!" I was walking on eggshells, unable to understand my world. I felt like I was losing my mind... And then I was on my own with a child, with nothing holding me up. I'd been hollowed out. An empty shell.

Everything I'd worked for was gone. I felt like I'd been cast aside. Rejected.

Still, I just worked diligently. That's what I'm supposed to do, right? RIGHT?! I built everything back up again, but the rejections - of which there are many in creative industries - started to sting. It seemed that I had less protective padding than I'd had before. I worked harder and harder, longer and longer. I wanted to show "everyone" that I was, in fact, fucking AMAZING and that I shouldn't be rejected.

Alongside auditioning and working, I spent an extraordinary amount of time working on programme proposals, pitches and pilots that ended up leading nowhere. If I'd been employed in the development department of a big production company, I'd have been paid for my time. But I was freelance, so every hour of research, every meeting, every re-write, every 'come in for a chat', every 'It's great! But could you write full outlines for 2 more episodes because they're now looking for series of 8?' was unpaid. Often, I'd have to pay for childcare to go to these meetings where I was told they wanted me to do just a bit more unpaid work. Or I'd film a pilot and then there'd be some random reason the broadcaster didn't commission it ('No one is interested in the history of technology' 'No one is interested in how technology can improve the future' ‘No one cares about what's happening with technology right now' WTF?). When a series I did was cancelled almost as soon as it aired, I'd had enough. I couldn't do it anymore.

Working in tv as 'talent' is very similar to being in an abusive relationship. I felt like I'd spent 15 years just standing still while being intermittently being screamed at and told how useless and shit I am, then being heaped with love and praise and told how utterly amazing I am and then doing heaps of unpaid labour and constantly being told I needed to do it better. It wasn't super great.

Because I was a ‘web expert’, I started producing websites and doing general stuff online. It was the early days of new media, so I was defining what my role was and there wasn't anyone saying 'no'. I was able to do some really awesome stuff because I didn't have to get anyone's permission, but, also, I didn't have anyone putting on the brakes... At one point, I was working 18-hour days. I'd be having conference calls with "LA" at 1am and then have to do some stuff for "Australia". I'd grab a few hours' sleep, get up, get my son to school, get back home, work until the end of the school day, pick him up, work a bit, do dinner and bedtime, then work, then maybe have a conference call and on and on for months. And months.

On my final day on a job, I had a bunch of media interviews to do. After dropping my son at school, I walked to the Tube station. As I arrived, I felt like I was going to faint and realised I wasn't feeling very well at all. I decided to take a taxi. In the cab, I phoned up my colleagues and told them that I was heading to the first interview, but I wouldn't be able to do the rest. At some point during that phone call, I touched the back of my ear and felt a huge bump. A lymph node. The only time those lymph nodes swelled up was when I was really ill - like when I had chicken pox as a teenager or a really bad strep infection. Oh no. This wasn't good...

I did the interview and got another taxi home. During that journey, I'd convinced myself that I'd destroyed my immune system by working too hard and was ill with something truly terrible. I'd go to my doctor's emergency clinic that afternoon...

...As I sat in the waiting room, ready for my name to be called, my mood crashed. What had been the point of all of that work over the previous decade and a half? What did it do for me other than make me ill? It didn't prove to anyone that I was good, worthy, clever, interesting, talented, amazing. Well, not the people I felt I needed to prove something to, that is. All that work just made me ill. Really ill. One of the early signs of lymphoma is having swollen lymph nodes behind the ear...

... I was called in, sat down, was asked what the issue was and I immediately collapsed in a sobbing heap as I told my doctor about the swollen lymph node behind my ear, my over-work and exhaustion and how I'd not slept in literally years and how I'd ruined my immune system and I think I'm really ill, like really ill, I don't know what I'm going to do... She said, calmly, 'OK. Let's have a look behind your ear... Hmmm... Does that hurt?... Hmmm... Right...'

She sat back down and said, 'OK... It's just a pimple. A very large one, which tells me that you probably are run down... But it's just a spot. Nothing more serious. But you need to take it as a sign that you need a rest. You aren't very well. I can sign you off work.' I told her that it was my last day on this job and I was freelance anyway and didn't have anything else to immediately go to. She told me that I needed to take a proper rest before I actually make myself ill.

For the next 8 weeks I'd wake up, take my son to school, go home, sleep all day, pick him up from school, do dinner and then go to sleep. I spent 8 weeks in bed, physically and mentally unable to do anything...

I took some baby steps and started working again. I was more careful with my hours but couldn't seem to say 'no'. The web stuff was changing and instead of 'running the show', more and more often I was 'cleaning up other people's messes'. I did some tv again. That was still a trainwreck. The work I was getting started to be very bitty. I wasn't being brought in to originate and complete projects that might take months. Instead, I'd be asked in for 'brainstorming' and then they'd just take my ideas and do them without me. The regular work I was getting was a day per week for a few months for one place, a day per week for a few months for another place. There was nothing I could sink my teeth into and feel a sense of accomplishment at completing. Everything was in bits. There never seemed to be a completion. I was jumping around day to day doing wildly different things. Producing events, consulting of all different types, writing of all different types, red carpet interviewing, tv programme development, weird stuff on the web. I was a different person every day. I started to get anxious about being asked 'and what do you do?' at parties. I didn't have an easy answer.

In 2016, I started to recognise the signs of another looming burn out. Or maybe it wasn't looming, maybe I was in the middle of it. It wasn't a great year. It didn't help that I'd been relentlessly hounded and harassed and threatened by too online idiots (including people from my real life) for the previous 3 years. It didn't help that I'd come down with the worst case of flu I'd ever have in the spring and was out of action for a month. It didn't help that the flu kicked off a series of health and medical issues, including Bell's Palsy, that affected me for the next 6 months. Brexit didn't help. Trump didn't help. Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Carrie Fisher dying didn't help.

I stepped away from the world.

Actually, I stepped away from the digital world.

I deleted 14 years of blog entries.

I deleted my blog from the Internet Archive.

I stopped seeing everything I did as a potential social media post.

I stopped taking on bitty jobs.

I started taking classes to learn new things.

I went to university for the first time.

I got an MA.

And now I'm here.

I'm not sure where 'here' is though.

I'm definitely less able to deal with stress than I ever was. I'm definitely keeping people who add stress to my life away from me. I'm definitely not working stupid hours anymore. I'm feeling a bit distant from everything I was close to over the past 30 years. I'm fighting against the idea that I just need to diligently work in order to be successful, because I'm not sure what 'successful' even means. I'm sure I don't feel it. If I was a certain type of person, I'd self-diagnose with ADHD and use it as an excuse for my subjective feeling of ‘unfulfillment’ and general bitterness at life, while pretending that I’m a kind, caring ‘man-of-the-people’ when in reality I’m a narcissistic, entitled jerk who believes I’m better than everyone (so there must be SOME reason I’m not being worshipped by literally everyone!). I'm not that type of person. I'm actually really happy. I’m just trying to figure out this new way of thinking that doesn’t tie my sense of self to an ill-defined idea of ‘achievement’. I’m trying to work out who I am if I don’t want to think of myself as a job title.

And I guess this is where I'm supposed to add some takeaway value. Some advice. Pass on some guidance. Tell you what I've learned from my experiences so that your life is easier.

I don't know.

I'm just trying to be for a while.

I'm thinking.

I'm growing stuff to look at or eat.

I'm feeding the birds.

I'm looking at trees.