A few months ago, I left my job.
I’ve been sitting with how to say that publicly for a while. Not because I’m ashamed of it (the opposite, actually), but because I wanted to say it from the right place. Not from the raw, exhausted place I was in when I made the decision. From here, with some sleep and some perspective.
So here we are.
I was at an agency for almost five years. It’s a great place to work. It will push you, challenge you in ways that are uncomfortable and, looking back, necessary. You will make work you’re proud of, things you didn’t think you were capable of producing. The clients are engaging. The colleagues are sharp (some of the best digital people in the game). The issues I worked on matter, and genuinely grateful for all of it, especially the friendships.
But like many folks working in comms, esp in digital comms, I was exhausted in a way I hadn’t fully admitted to myself until I was already gone. Not the kind of tired a good night’s sleep fixes. The kind that accumulates over years, where you’re at your desk late, and you can’t remember if you ate today (the answer is probably no), and you file that away and keep working. Where your body is technically present, but the actual you, the curious one, the creative one, the one who likes to paint and dance and find the light in things, has quietly left the building.
I felt myself abandoning myself, again. That’s the only way I know how to say it.
The last time I felt this feeling was in 2020 after I spent a decade working as a congressional staffer— I was exhausted and burnt out.
My body tried to tell me before I was ready to listen.
July 1st, last year. I was rushing out of a metro station in DC, just got off a train from a meeting, and was heading to the office for another one, when I fell. Fractured my foot. On crutches for the rest of the summer.
And I still didn’t slow down. I kept working the same hours because that’s what survival mode does: it teaches you to override the signals, to tell yourself you don’t have time to receive the message. So you don’t.
It took several more months before I finally listened.
The first real moment of reckoning came on a Tuesday, a few days after I left. I was doing something completely mundane, brushing my teeth or maybe in the shower, and I felt it. That familiar tightening in my chest, the feeling of oh wait, there’s something I need to be doing. An email. A report. Something. Anything.
Except there wasn’t. There was nothing for me to rush and do.
My body hadn’t gotten the memo yet, though. It was still running the old program, anticipating a flood of work that no longer existed. I just stood there and let myself feel it, this phantom urgency, and told myself: you don’t have to go anywhere. There is nothing. You’re okay. Breathe.
It took a few days for that to actually feel real.
What came after was quieter than I expected.
I cleaned my closet, something I’d been meaning to do for months. I cooked breakfast slowly, with nowhere to be. Washed dishes. Did laundry. Took care of my plants. Went to the gym with my husband on a Saturday morning and remembered what it felt like to move my body because I wanted to, not because I was squeezing it in between things.
I know that sounds small. But it felt enormous, because it was the first time in a long time that I felt like an active participant in my own life. Not just someone moving through it, counting down the hours to go back to sleep and start again.
I was living. Not just existing.
I’ve spent many years doing what I call self-study. Journaling. Getting curious about what makes me come alive and what drains me. Learning how I respond to things, what I need, and where my limits are. Not navel-gazing, genuine curiosity. Who am I, really? What do I want? What does my gut say when I get quiet enough to hear it?
My gut has never lied to me. When I’ve listened to it, things have worked out. When I haven’t, when I’ve overridden it for someone else’s timeline or expectations, I’ve suffered for it every time.
Leaving was my gut. It wasn’t impulsive—although it seemed that way to some people—which is funny because I’m rarely an impulsive person. It was the clearest, most deliberate decision I’d made in years. And the moment I made it, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: control, intention, myself, and free.
I’m not sharing this as a cautionary tale or a “quit your job” post. That’s not what this is.
This is about self-knowledge, about what happens when work consumes so much of you that you lose track of who you are outside of it, and what it actually takes to come back.
I’m a few months into what I’ve been calling a mini sabbatical. Taking dance classes. Going back to the gym. Cooking real meals. Visiting museums and art galleries. Reconnecting with my meditation practice. Reading. Writing. Creating. Spending actual time with my husband, my family, and my friends. These aren’t rewards I’m giving myself. They’re requirements, the things that make me a full person.
I’m an artist and photographer, and one of the things I’ve been working on for a long time now (outside of writing my blog and recording YouTube videos) is a personal project I call Find the Light. It started literally, me finding and capturing light in whatever space I was in. But it became something else, a way of seeing, a practice of looking for what’s still luminous even when things feel dim. That’s really what this sabbatical has been: finding the light again, after a season of being pretty deep in the fog.
I’ll be sharing more of this, the reflections, the lessons, the photos, as part of an ongoing conversation here on the blog. Not because I have it all figured out. Because I know I’m not the only one who has felt this way. And the human experience, in all its mess and contradiction, deserves to be spoken out loud so others can feel less afraid of sharing their story and not suffer in silence.
The mini sabbatical isn’t the story but the setting and the catalyst for finally adding to the conversation.
The actual story is about knowing who you are and choosing to come back to that person, no matter what it costs.
A few weeks on from writing this, things are still unfolding in ways I didn't plan for and couldn't have predicted. That's the part nobody tells you about coming back to yourself—it doesn't stop at recovery. It starts opening doors.
