A Humid Summer Night in Orlando

It was a hot summer night in the Amway Arena in Orlando, Florida the first time I collapsed from exhaustion directly contributed to the hours I was working and the immense stress I was under managing a particular project. Yes, I said the first time, which implies and confirms there was a second.

The second time was 2 days later, only that time I didn’t lose consciousness and the paramedics didn’t come like they did in Orlando. That time a trusted colleague scooped me up in the unintelligible puddle I was and drove me home at which point I took a forced 2 week “vacation” at the strong urging of medical professionals.

My doctor said my body was in adrenal failure. He also said that my job was killing me. He didn’t write me a prescription for any drug because there were none to take for my condition. What was wrong was my job and his medical advice was to get a new one, working 40 hours a week with a lower level of pressure and expectations around my performance. It was a rather alarming few days followed by my shrink and my Chinese medicine doctor both saying the same thing. “Your job is slowing killing you.”

Where do you go from there? Really – what comes next? I didn’t quit, though looking back that might have been the best thing for me to make a clean break. It’s difficult to say because the hardest lesson is the one I’m facing now and that is facing the truth that the experience fundamentally changed my core and altered my tolerance for toxic environments, what is important to me and how I view work.

Because I was addicted to the glamour (if you can call it that) of the job, the ego and the lifestyle, and to be quite honest I was emotionally lost, I stayed at the company. I did switch jobs, twice now in fact, am I’m still not clear why I haven’t left.

I’m sure part of it is I wanted to prove it was me that needed fixing and if could learn to set healthy boundaries and define “work life balance” that my ego and lifestyle would remain fed and my relationship with the company would be fine again. What I missed was once I defined work life balance – I saw clearly the relationship with the company no longer meet my needs. And here I sit, trying to figure out how to break up with a corporate giant – how do you say to a corporation, “No really, it’s not you – it’s me?”