Wellness
The way out isnt endless leisure.
Its finding meaningful work, outside of your career.
Almost everyone I know is facing some form of reckoning around ambition right now.
But what happens when your time of self-care transforms into a Dali-esque realm of melting clocks and blurred boundaries?
Maybe the real problem is that weve fundamentally misunderstood ambition all along.
Its not surprising that career aspirations, when divorced from the context of other desires, would feel unsteady.
In misunderstanding work, were also misunderstanding burnout.
Instead of signaling lethargy, maybe sometimes burnout signals a desire formorelife, not less.
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One of the most common misconceptions about depressed people is that theyre cynical about life.
And when they cant get that kind of engagement, theyre frustrated and bewildered.
Their disinterest isnt laziness; its idealism, drive, hunger, and raw ambition.
The challenge of meaningful work is making sure it stays meaningful.
The deeper you dig emotionally to make what you make, the more meaningful it feels, yes.
But you have to keep digging in new areas, which is hard to do.
You stop working so hard.
You step back from whats meaningful, and soon its difficult to find your way back in.
For me, physically hard work often helps with that.
I was doing work that was designed for a machine.
Why is that true?
Why do we naturally find ourselves soothed by gargantuan, impossible tasks that we know well never conquer?
We love these things because they remove the pressure of accomplishment.
Burnout means being alienated not just from your work but from your own body and mind.
Thats why burnout isnt always cured by setting up a life that feels more leisurely.
Sure, Ive learned to take pride in the things I make.
Understanding this about myself has shifted my way of navigating the world of work.
Ive sometimes been tempted to apply my overachiever nature to doing less and less work not a terrible thing!
The answer to this state of affairs isnt always to rest and relax and reflect on where you are.
You have to experiment.
Modest goals dont fit my wildly ambitious desire to make music.
I dont want to hit some middling target, to make something mediocre.
Maybe instead of jogging, you want to train for a marathon.
Maybe instead of fiddling around on your guitar, you want to take classical guitar lessons.
Sometimes it doesnt help or inspire a person to be practical.
You have to get a little bit unrealistic so you can reacquaint yourself with your truest desires.
They learned to understand their hunger for hard work.
They learned to recognize how deeply and thoroughly focused and engaged and driven they were.
They discovered how overwhelming their love of their most treasured pursuits was.
And they figured out how to apply all of thoseardent desiresto their lives at large.
This article was originally published onAug.
