Sick Kids, Missed Festival, And Burnout Realizations

Your weekend plans can be perfect on paper and still get wiped out by a single phone call from school. I went into the week excited for a local spring festival with my kids, friends, and a rare chance to slow down, then a low-grade fever turned into a house-wide crash. Missing the fun wasn’t the hardest part. The harder part was hearing the message underneath it all: it’s time to slow down, stop fighting reality, and just be for a minute.

That moment opened the door to a bigger conversation about working mom burnout, mental load, and the pressure to keep everything running while your own energy disappears. I talk honestly about what burnout feels like for me: brain fog, the inability to focus, dreading even the things I normally enjoy, and the constant sense that work is an emergency every day. I also share a story from early in my career when I first learned what burnout really is and why “gutting it out” only works for so long.

We get practical too. I walk through simple burnout recovery tools you can try right now: sorting tasks into red, yellow, and white to downgrade false urgency, reducing decision fatigue with repeatable routines, time-blocking your energy so deep work happens when you’re sharp, and setting non-negotiable boundaries like no work after a set time. If you’ve been missing family time, feeling “always on,” or wondering why rest doesn’t feel like it’s fixing anything, you’ll leave with language for what’s happening and a path forward. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s carrying too much, and leave a review. What’s the clearest burnout sign your body sends you?

Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Purpose

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Hello everyone, this is Steel Versus Podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope everybody had a really, really nice weekend. I had a very odd weekend and I wanted to share it with you because there's some nuances that I want I thought might be relatable. So as you all know, I am an advocate for pivoting when your plans change because sometimes you have a plan and things don't go according to plan, and you kind of have to just go with what's in front of you at the moment. So case in point, um this weekend my town had this really cool spring festival at one of the local parks, and the vendors go, food trucks go, they have blow ups for the kids, huge bounce houses, Easter at con like just loads of activities, like really, really fun for the kids, right? And I was planning on going with my kids, and had even made plans to like meet up with their friends and some of the mom friends that I haven't been able to see in a while because I'm working so much. And that was just here Saturday. And so Thursday, I got a call to pick up one of my kids from school, and usually it's like nonsense when I have to pick the kids up. They're like, oh, they have this fever. They typically don't, and then it's just like a okay, it's just like you bring them home kind of thing, not a big deal. But this time, unfortunately, it was a big deal. So my son comes home Thursday with a low-grade fever, and I was like, All right, maybe it just doesn't feel good, it's fine, like not a huge problem. But then Friday all day, he still was not well. And you know, his temperature wasn't terrible, but like his temp was ranging between like 100 to it was sticking at 101. So 101.5, 101.6, like it was kind of hovering around there most of the day on Friday. But what was most um not alarming, but most significant was that he was um just laying down the whole day. You could tell he was really sluggish, couldn't move, like really couldn't do anything. And so that was sort of like alarm bells to me. Like, all right, this is probably more than um just a regular cold. I'm Googling, and of course the flu comes up and regular cold comes up because there's really nothing you could do. Like once you're sick, you're just sick. But then I started thinking, well, hope the rest of us don't get sick. But unfortunately, one of my other kids got sick too this weekend. So we come to Saturday, and two of the three kids is not well, and I'm down to a point where I'm starting to not feel well and I'm getting a fever, and I was like, we we just can't go. Like, I think the message this weekend was it's time to slow down. That was really the message this weekend was to slow down and to just take your time and just be. Really, just be. Don't do anything, just be. That's really hard for me to do, even when I am sick. I struggle. I have to be really sick to really just lay around, but I still wasn't feeling well, and then I'm still not feeling well. I still feel dizzy and a little off. But I was explaining to one of my daughters because she was disappointed that we weren't going on Saturday. She's like, all my friends are going, which ended up not being true. She was disappointed, and I had to just say, like, you know, it just kind of is what it is. Like you have to just go with it. And sometimes you need to understand that you're gonna be pointed in a different direction and you have to be okay with it. You gotta be comfortable with that. I am starting to try to teach those lessons now to the kids so that way when they get older, they can recognize these signs and recognize when they're being pointed in a different direction. So there was that situation. Beyond that situation, I also know very deeply that beyond the fact that I'm not feeling very well, I am very burnt out. You guys have heard me talk a little bit about my job and my hours at work. Now, I have uh my job is really demanding, and I love my job, so this is really not like a speaking down of it, but it's really demanding. And typically there's an emergency every day. Every day there's something stressful happening, and every day there's something that needs extra attention. You're almost always behind. You kind of have to just make peace with the fact that you're always gonna be behind because there's so much to be done that it's just impossible to stay on top of all of it. So all of this compiled together, and then me being the overachiever that I typically usually am, I've been trying to combat the um the amount of work with working late at night. And the balance there has imbalanced me. And because of this imbalance, now I'm burged out. And beyond the fact that I wasn't feeling that well this weekend, I legitimately just could not bring myself to do anything. And there was things to be done. I'm I'm not gonna lie, I had a list, and to be perfectly frank, I was planning on working this morning. I was planning to work this morning, and I just I just couldn't get myself to do it. I I was just tired and over it, and I just couldn't do it. The very first time that I um heard the phrase the burnt out, I I didn't think that that would happen to me. I I was really young when it happened. I think I was like 24. It's 23, 24 years old. I uh I had a really busy season at work where I was working like 15 hour days, something to that effect. I um I had to go on site. I flew down to Florida for um a meeting for a pharmaceutical company. I was gone for about a week. It was a week or two weeks, I can't remember. Um, and when I came back, I was I was kind of brain dead. Like I was like dumb. I was just having a really hard time focusing. I was having a hard time reading my emails, like just getting myself organized and motivated to do other things was really, really hard. And one of my bosses came out and she said, um, burnout is normal after you're on site. And I didn't I didn't know what she meant. I was really young and had no idea. And I was like, what do you mean? I was like, no, I I'm not burnt out because obviously I am who I am. And I'm like, how dare you? I would never be burned out. But I was. And she explained to me, like, when you worked that many hours, you eventually your mind eventually just snaps, it can't take it, and you're burnt out. You just can't focus, you can't function, and you have to let yourself reset. Now I'm acutely aware of it, and because it's happened multiple times at this point, and so now I'm cute acutely aware of it, and I felt it. I've been feeling it the past week or so. Last week I felt it pretty deeply. I have about four, probably four intense weeks left before things start to lighten up a little bit. I'm lying. No, I'm not lying. Four intense weeks left before things might start to lighten up a little bit. And it's just uh get I have to, I'm trying to be very mindful of the fact that it's not forever and that it's gonna be done soon. I just have to hang in there, I just have to gut it out. This is the hardest part. I must say, this has to be the hardest part of everything is just knowing that I don't want to do it right now and I just want to call out and I just want to like lay around and watch TV all day and take a nap and just like be a person and not have to be like chained to the desk. These are all normal feelings. I feel like it's just like normal. And especially for somebody who's like, you know, when you work hard and you love your career and you love what you're doing, like it's hard. It is really hard and it catches up to you. So I quickly Googled what I was hopping on to record. What it bur burnout, how do you calm that burnout, especially as a working mom? And it says burnout as a working mom isn't just about being tired, it's a combination of mental load, constant switching, and the pressure of doing everything well. So the goal isn't just rest, it's reducing friction, claiming control, and protecting your energy on purpose. That's actually really smart. I didn't really read this over before I'm reading it to you guys. I'm kind of I'm straight up just going to the cuff because, as I mentioned, I am dropped out. So basically, stop treating everything like an emergency. That makes sense. I think I said that to you guys last one of my episodes last week. Um, that everything is urgent, feeling is a major burnout driver. Pretty, pretty significant. I actually like this tip here because I've talked about something like this before. Um, red is a true emergency, health, safety, hard deadlines. Yellow is important but flexible. And white is just noise, things that feel urgent but don't really matter in the long term. So you're aiming to downgrade at least 30% of your urgent list daily. Reduce decision fatigue. You're making hundreds of decisions a day. I know I don't like it. Uh automate what you can. Well, this is the mom part. Rotate five to seven go-to dinners. I do already do that. Set a weekly outfit formula. I work from home. There is no outfit. Standardized morning and bedtime routines. We're already there. That no problem. Um, time block your energy. Not all hours are equal. High focus work when your breathing is sharp, morning for many. That's actually really accurate. You know, I think I'm gonna start getting up early just to work and flipping when I do meditating because I am very focused in morning. I starts the fade in the afternoon. Um, admin tasks for lower energy times, that's for your afternoon, and family time is protected, not multitasking. That is the key factor there. I have been deeply feeling the miss family time, and that's really been bothering me. Um lower the invisible load. This is one of the biggest hidden burnout drivers. Um, you're likely carrying planning, remembering, and anticipating needs. Yep. All those things. Make it visible and shared, use the shared family list on a calendar, assign ownership. Oh yeah, so it's not gonna work in my house. Anybody else? I'll keep going. Build a non-negotial negotiable boundary. Burnout thrives when everything is flexible except you. So, oh, I like this. No work after 8 p.m. One night a week is no cooking. I uh I do that. Kid night, weeknight dinner. Kid night dinner is Wednesday nights, and the kids are in charge of cooking their own dinner. Release pressure, not stress. You don't need just need rest. You need to feel less on. Quick resets that actually work, five to ten minutes quiet in your car before going inside. Go sit in my car for 10 minutes. Voice note instead then instead of bottling it in. Oh, interesting. Cry and clean combo. Yes, I just talked about that. Um emotionally releases prevents buildup. My god, I actually do some of this. That's so funny. There's actually this is this is not that bad. Watch for burnout red flags, constant irritability, brain fog, heavy duty, dreading everything, even things you used to enjoy, feeling like you're failing at everything. Holy crap! I am burnt out. So, in any case, there are some actionable things that you can do when you're already starting to feel it, which clearly I am, and that'll get you through this hump. It's this this hill that you have to climb. You will get there. I always get through this. It's just one of these moments of time. So thank you so much for listening to this episode. I think, listen, we all get burnt out, and it's just a matter of recognizing it, acknowledging it, and finding a path forward. And I think this is a really solid one. So I appreciate everything. I appreciate you guys being here while I'm going through everything that I'm going through. And I appreciate all the new listeners and subscribers, especially since I consistently have imposter syndrome what, you know, and and try to come up with I I have great ideas for the podcast around the week, and then I come to recording and it and it's so funny because I always just go with my gut and I just start talking and it seems to be working. Everybody seems to be liking it. So I'm really thrilled about how all of this is going. Thank you for being with me on this episode. I know I rambled a bit, but again, burnout is real. I hope you all are doing well. And uh, if you have any topic requests or if you ever want to reach out, I am always available. You could always reach out to me on LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm not as active as I used to be, but I am still there. So appreciate you all being here with me, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.