, 5 min, 909 words
Tags: kayak-adventures
To say that our season has taken off would be a dramatic understatement. I started this post in early July, and it's only now, in early (strike that, mid) August, that I've managed to find the time to finish it up. This job, in the words of my boss, is "the hardest job you'll ever love." So I knew coming into this summer that I would be working a lot, and that burnout might be an issue. What I didn't expect was to learn that burnout doesn't have to mean the end. It can also spark a new beginning.
There are a lot of possible definitions of burnout, but all of them share some common features. In general, it is when you feel exhausted and worn thin by the demands of your work. It can result from long hours, a lack of control over your own working conditions, or a long-term feeling of purposelessness. Closely-related compassion fatigue is seen in many health care workers and social justice advocates. In general, we know it when we see it.
I'm no stranger to burnout, or the feeling of work-related stress that compounds over many weeks. I first experienced it in college, when coursework and chronic injuries conspired to wear me out. When I left school, I couldn't wait to get out of there. Most devastating to me, I no longer got excited about learning more about physics.
Later, in my work at DESRES, I got involved in diversity and inclusion advocacy within my company. In a matter of weeks that work spiraled into many hours per day of research, discussion, and coordination. After a few months of this, I was exhausted, cynical, and just done with the whole business. I took several weeks "off" of advocacy, undermining some of the causes I cared about. When I came back, I opened up to some colleagues about how burned out I felt, and ended up sharing much more of the load on my second round of internal advocacy. It didn't fix the cynicism and occasional despair, but at least I could share it with others.
And most recently, here at Kayak Adventures: after a string of twelve-hour days and the resulting physical and emotional exhaustion, I just felt done again. As an introvert, guiding can be more than physically exhausting. Months of intentional "extroverted" behavior started to add up and by early July I was really starting to feel the effects.
Burnout can undoubtedly mean the end of something. It can irreversibly change your opinion of your work. But my recent experience with guiding and burnout has led me to a more nuanced view of the issue.
The first thing that went right for me was that I work in a tremendously open and supportive environment. When I was feeling stressed and tired, I said so. First to colleagues, and eventually to my boss too. It was hard to say – it felt like admitting defeat. But once I did, it was freeing to have it out in the open rather than having to hide it like in previous burnout situations. And it led to some really useful conversations! In particular, Trent encouraged me to try out some other guiding styles: less extrovert-y, less draining strategies that could make my work here sustainable.
That was hard at first – I had established a strong guiding style that depended on me being energetic and enthusiastic and dragging my guests along to that attitude too. But as I played with it, lower-energy guiding started to feel more and more natural. More surprising to me, people seemed to respond to it just as well as to my older style.
Two things I've played with and liked to cultivate this lower-energy guiding style:
And the result? I'm happy to say that it's been more than four weeks since that fateful "burnout as a signal for change" conversation, and I'm feeling fairly sustainable and energetic. I lead a slightly different type of trip than I used to, but people respond well to it and it gives me space to recharge my own batteries. In other words, for the first time, this burnout served as a new beginning rather than the end of an era.