I’ve always been a passionate person. Whether it’s the sports teams I root for, friends and family, or my career I have an all or nothing mindset. I’ve always been proud of this trait and have wholeheartedly embraced it.
Over the last few months I’ve found this passion slowly dwindle down. I’ve really just been getting by day to day. It’s the reason I haven’t shared a story with you in about 7 months. It’s the reason my boss sat me down recently and said, “Are you ok? You’re fire looks like it’s burning out.”
It actually terrified me that someone I work with noticed something like that. My fake it until I make it mentality wasn’t working. What was worse was that I sat there in silence. I didn’t have an answer to his question.
To be honest I’m not quite sure what changed.
I just know it has felt like I’m taking a break from life.
The last time I had this feeling I was going through a mid-college crisis. This included changing my major 3 times and transferring schools. My answer was to flee the problems and start fresh. I know I can’t run away from my career like I did when my choice of majors didn’t work. So how do get out of this lull?
Digging deep into that time in my life I found what helped me was taking a giant breathe and looking at the world from a different perspective, literally.
While interning at Penn State Wilkes-Barre I was having a really hard time with a project so my boss, Rachel had me look at the problem from a different viewpoint. We laid upside down on the couch in her office with our feet in the air and talked about the problem. While it seemed like just a solution to a project at the time it really opened my eyes. Staring at the ceiling actually made me look at the problem differently and start spewing ideas I didn’t even know I had. I started doing it a lot more back then when I just didn’t know the answer.
Reaching a really low point a few weeks ago after a couple though days at work I realized there was only one thing left to do, face life ceiling-up. I laid upside down on my living room couch and wrote down all of the problems that have weighed on me. I started thinking about them in ways I hadn’t before. My ah-ha moment was that it’s more important to embrace a messy life even when taking a break is so much easier. The moments I take to appreciate the small wins help me tackle the setbacks life hands me.
Taking a break was nice but it’s time to face life head-on.