This essay includes tough topics
like burnout and mental health.
Exit by going back one page.

Design work takes empathy.
It takes trust in myself to get something
reviewed by others. It takes patience to hear contrasting thoughts and discuss them further.
That’s the whole reason I enjoy this work:
it’s another chance to be the calm,
nuanced person I aspire to be.

Still, like any other discipline, it takes.
I retain a healthy, hard-working balance
to keep myself ready and active at work.
I replenish the energy I spend in on-site testing
and tough meetings by taking creativity breaks
and sharing time with friends.

A crisis had to teach me that.
Three years ago, I was guiding my team,
leading a second team ad hoc, and managing
a third team’s urgent, particular needs.
It left me no energy outside of work, but that was the way I had been working for years.

One day, I was given yet another work whipsaw
to navigate. I needed to drop my current project, join a new team, and toss out a deliverable in a week. Usually, I would discuss the rationale behind a request or maybe offer up a less disruptive approach to consider. This time, I couldn’t.

Work had drained me. This was the fourth quick change I had faced in a few months. By then, I had been shoved into client meetings at random, joining and leaving teams in stints that lasted days. My team’s work had been tampered with, like when UX test participants were shown what to do to make our user flows seem more successful than they really were. Even my demeanor had been unevenly clocked, watching leaders yuk up on client calls right after scolding me, “do not laugh with them.”

On a personal level, I was also burnt out.
I had been struggling with family, close and distant friendships, my relationship, home, and nutritional health. Add to that list work, the thing I considered my ultimate priority, and I found myself past my breaking point.

I began showing up to the office late, apathetic, pulling away from teams
 I had been positively supporting just weeks prior. I’d “yes” my way out of any conversation, lest anyone notice the glaze of panic in my eyes. I started skipping out on work events, lying as I blamed it all on train delays. Outside of work, my friends could easily tell that I was pained, but I turned them all away
 to avoid any risk of heartfelt talks. Even phone calls with my sister became difficult.

I had cratered.

As apparent as its effects were, I couldn’t explain why it was happening. My own actions were making me more and more alone, and trying to decipher my situation overwhelmed me further. My anxiety constricted me like a beanstalk growing without abandon. Still, I only focused in on work: “I have to quit or speak up or find a new job and that will make everything else way easier.”

I decided to quit that job. My zombie self still felt the need to lie, telling everyone that I was quitting because I had gotten a new job but wasn’t allowed to say where. (I’m sorry to those folks for those bunk stories. I didn’t tell them before then and I sure haven’t since.)

I then moved onto my second step which was — nonexistent, as quitting was just another isolating move. Without much productive thought, my numb and empty brain spun out of control, filling up with increasingly spiteful screeds against myself.

I slept a lot. I barely ate. I fell into a habit
of bingeing, distractions, and self-harm. That cycle of pummeling myself and numbing the pain that ensued went on for months, until one dire night. It set off a distant alarm in my head:
“I’m unhealthy and isolated to the point
that I could gravely hurt myself.”

I suddenly had my second step: leave. I chose to leave not just my walk-up but New York altogether. I picked a place where I had spent a college summer, I made a moving plan, and I packed up. It was a plan on autopilot, fueled by fearful adrenaline and executed in a hurried, clumsy way. It happened so fast that I didn’t even tell my friends that I had left:

“Where did John go?”
“He and his partner moved to Denver.”
“Are you f%*$ing kidding? When?”

I told myself that being in this new-yet-familiar place would be encouraging. After all, I was looking forward to my third step of recovery, which was —

Still nonexistent. With anxiety running unchecked among a work-above-all-else mindset, swapping out a city or home or relationship had no effect on the true, underlying problems I faced. Whatever brief respite I felt from Manhattan was promptly replaced with guilt and questions around my rushed escape. Will I ever talk to those friends again? Is this what growth looks like? Did I just make a 2,000‑mile mistake?

Folks had been telling me to begin therapy sessions for years, through much urging and a few brutal fights, but the work mindset always sailed me through: “people seem pleased with the work I do so I must not be struggling that much.” Without boundaries, work was me; my life ran unattended.

It took one last dire moment to finally make me realize that I was deeply, fundamentally unhealthy. This time, it was different: “I am really lost and I need help.”

In the twelve months that followed, I gave myself that help:

• I started therapy. I uncovered hard stuff from my past.
• I saw doctors, counselors, and a psychologist.
• I was diagnosed, twice. I improved with treatments and techniques.
• I saw how wild that last job was. I learned how my over-encumbered working style partly enabled those situations in my career. I set boundaries to help me handle future ones healthily.
• I established my freelance business. I failed at it as much as I succeeded at it.
• I became gleefully active in my neighborhood. I somehow became the block’s choicest petsitter, and I loved it.
• I sought out an understanding of my relationship. I worked with my partner to improve ours. I worked with others to find myself in it.
• I ended that relationship.
• I visited my family. I told them everything. I gave them support in the ways they supported me.
• I moved again. I cleaned two houses in the process. I learned how to ask for help.
• I reached back out to friends I had abandoned. I apologized to them. I ugly-cried when they welcomed me back.
• I set goals, truthful ones to keep me poking and prodding at life.

Was it a lot? You betcha, but most of all, it was validating. I was finally giving myself the energy and attention I had only poured into work.

It’s been just under a year since that. I’ve been practicing healthy habits and caring for myself. I’ve resumed my creative, vigorous life. I have more to do, making progress toward those goals as I get myself back to the East Coast and return closer to my family and my friends.

When I reflect on all that work, one moment stands out.

I was with Mom last April. We were driving home after an intensely sad and busy day in Ashland. I knew I could use a break, and I had a feeling she could too. I took our exit and pulled into the McDonald’s on the hill, a family fixture that’s older than me. Walking back to the car, food in hand, I asked, “Would you want to stay and eat for a few minutes?” A car picnic was something Mom and Grandma used to have when they’d visit for the day. It was tough at first, but as we began to eat, we reminisced.

We ended up sitting in that parking lot for more than a little while. Through reflection, tears, and laughs, I was comforted by a melty sundae, in the purplest sunset dancing along a familiar sky, and in us, simply there, talking together. Present.

If you ever feel in crisis or need help,
call or text 988 to talk to a person at anytime,
or visit 988lifeline.org or 988.ca for resources.