Posts Tagged ‘house’
How I burnt out…
Some of this blog is me climbing/tearing/breaking out of my 8 months of recovering haze, taking stock of where I am and moving forward to a better me and more positive future. Part of that process is working out where I went wrong. And part of that wrongness was my burn out.
I don’t think I couldn’t of not burnt out, because I wouldn’t listen to anyone at the time. I worked myself to the ground and I paid the consequences. As my family and friends said I was a car accident waiting to happen. It was just when and where. Here are the bigger elements of it.
The year before moving had been a big one. In that time,August 2010 to August2011, I had:
- Travelled to 4 different countries for work or to see my husband 7 times.
- Negotiated with my boss to work while away (usually I did this on my boyfriends bedroom floor), and then take the shitty shifts when I got home to make up for my physical absence.
- Spent the first 2 months of the 2011 having my first white christmas with my boyfriend turned fiance.
- To delay my return flights home to Australia because of the floods and then clean up my house as it was a flooded snake infested mess after the huge floods. (waterlogged insurance policies anyone?)
- Gotten married and planned the wedding in 6 weeks, I allowed my husband to pressure me to do this (NEVER RECOMMENDED)
- Attended and completed full-time university study on campus
- Applied to the Embassy to marry in Australia and then applied for the living visa in the European country. (Paper work, tears and more paper work)
- Moved house by myself once in Australia and another time to France
- Worked full time the entire time I was in Australia
I know I had no kids, no pets, and my husband was in another country. BUT I kept on taking on extra normal life stuff, while dealing with everything that was bizarre. Here is a few small examples of voluntarily overloading myself when
I could have easily said no:
- Sure Aunty H I’ll bake 2kgs of my famous cookies for your granddaughters school fete.
- Yea Alana I’ll work that extra shift on top of my normal shift that day… Do you mind if I study when it gets quiet?
- Mr C, do you need that power presentation on international business due Monday? Oh and will I get extra marks for this subject?
- There is a birthday Ritz? Ok let me organise the restaurant, you organise the rest!

I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t realise how wrong I’d let my life become. How empty and meaningless my actions had become. I was doing stuff but only in reaction. I had stopped being proactive and controlling how, who and what I spent my time and energy on.
I got in over my head. I’m talking about when I still couldn’t sleep cos my body was still holding left over stress. I yelled at my best-friends, and then would burst into tears on the phone to my mother for no reason. And then the Grand Final: Me the total foodaholic, had forgotten to eat properly for 4 days so I dropped a kilo or two, and I didn’t even get excited about it? HELLO?? I spent the last 4 months running on empty.
By the time I arrived as an immigrant in France, my husbands mother-land, I was numb…I had spent the last 4 months running on empty. And here I was in totally new waters. I had no job, no university study (I had to wait for the new year intake for correspondence), I had no idea how to speak the language, heaps of time and no friends.. 90% of my husbands family can’t even understand English. Our house, which my husband had lived in for 6 months had transformed into a bachelors haven, it was empty, with a shitty couch and his idea of cleanliness. His prized possession was and still is, the huge over-sized flat screen TV.

When everything stops, sometimes you need to too.
Me? After not stopping for over a year? I was numb, isolated and exhausted.
I went from doing too much to having too much time.
I crashed. Hard.
Chelsea B
Have you ever burnt out? How? When? Do you think you could have ever stopped it?